When Zillow announced its new pre-marketing option known as Zillow Preview on Tuesday, the portal wasn’t ditching its policy aimed at stamping out publicly marketed private listings, a company executive told Inman.
The portal’s new option allows agents at partnering brokerages and franchises to directly upload listings to Zillow and Trulia without sharing them broadly via the multiple listing service and with other portals.
But Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson confirmed to Inman this week that the company hadn’t shifted its stance on its Listing Access Standards, an ongoing attempt to block brokerages and MLSs from creating or facilitating private listing networks.
“The principle behind [the Listing Access Standards] was you shouldn’t be hiding listings,” Samuelson said. “There are some brokers who, if you go to their website, you do a search, they’ll say, ‘Hey, there’s 37 more listings that we’re not showing you in the search results. But if you click here, we’ll show them to you.’”
“What happens when you click here is they require you to work with one of their agents,” Samuelson said. “So essentially what they’re saying is, we’re going to hide these listings, and the only way you can see them is if you work with us.”
Zillow has been battling with the mega-brokerage Compass over that company’s 3-Phased Marketing Strategy, which includes a phase in which a listing is available only through Compass agents.
Those listings are displayed publicly on Compass’ website in what Zillow calls a “black box” that tells consumers there are more listings they can only see through Compass. That display violates Zillow’s policy, and those listings risk being banned from Zillow.
Samuelson said that strategy means the brokerage would be poised to collect a commission from both sides of the transaction, a practice known as “double-ending.”
“They’re giving the seller less exposure — bad for the seller — in order to attract buyers, in order to recruit agents to these hidden listings,” Samuelson added. “Those hidden listings would still violate our listing access standards. Listings that are widely displayed, whether it’s on Zillow or another national site, people have a fair shot at them. So those listings, going forward, would not violate our listing access standards.”
Zillow also signaled that pre-marketed listings are allowed as long as they’re displayed on a national consumer-facing search website like Redfin or Realtor.com.
Agents at Redfin have been posting coming-soon listings on the portal as part of their marketing strategy, alongside coming soon listings from agents at Compass brands.
Those listings don’t violate Zillow’s policy and would be displayed on Zillow once they become active and widely distributed via the MLS, Samuelson said, adding that other portals have fewer monthly visitors than Zillow.
“Redfin has a fraction of the traffic we have, but still, there is a way for people to find those listings,” Samuelson said.
