In a major — albeit temporary — legal victory for Zillow, a federal judge on Friday ordered Chicago’s multiple listing service to restore the portal’s access to listings that originate in the MLS, a Zillow spokesperson told Inman.
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MRED MLS moved earlier this week to cut Zillow’s access to its data feed of real estate listings. Those listings power Zillow and are viewed by hundreds of millions of consumers every month. The judge granted a temporary restraining order stopping MRED from cutting its feed to Zillow, the spokesperson said, and the fully supply of listings was restored within hours of the verbal order.
Shortly after MRED cut Zillow’s feed, over 60 percent of all active listings in Chicago disappeared from the platform. Across MRED’s primary coverage area, which includes all of Illinois and portions of Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin, Zillow said in court documents that it lost over half of all listings.
“Today’s ruling is an important first step for the Chicago home buyers, sellers and agents who have been harmed by a coordinated scheme between MRED and Compass to reduce transparency in the housing market,” a Zillow spokesperson said in a statement. “In the middle of a housing affordability crisis, powerful industry players colluded to hide listings, suppress competition and steer consumers toward a single dominant brokerage.”
“The court immediately recognized what was at stake, not just for Zillow, but for every person trying to find or sell a home across Illinois and beyond,” the statement continued. “We will continue to fight to ensure this anti-consumer conduct is not allowed to take root permanently.”
MRED’s decision to cut Zillow’s feed led to a marketing blitz by Compass International Holdings, Redfin and others seeking to capitalize on the temporary drop in active listings on Zillow.
Other real estate platforms maintained their access to the full suite of listings from MRED, giving them thousands more listings than Zillow while its feed was cut.
The ruling comes in the case Zillow filed against MRED and Compass as the three companies battle over Zillow’s attempt to ban listings if they violated the portal’s Listing Access Standard. The standards ban listings from the portal if they were publicly marketed before reaching the MLS and Zillow.
Zillow enacted and began enforcing that policy last year in response to a growing wave of brokerages creating private listing networks — an effort that was driven in large part by Compass.
The judge’s Friday ruling, which has yet to be written and filed on the court docket, doesn’t resolve Zillow’s larger allegation that Compass colluded with MRED to boycott the portal over its pre-marketed listings rules.
In their own statements, Compass and MRED said Friday’s ruling was a mixed bag for Zillow.
“The central issue remains unchanged: Zillow wants the benefit of receiving MLS listing data while reserving the right to discriminate against certain lawful listings, sellers, and brokers whose marketing strategies it disfavors,” MRED said in a statement. “The court’s ruling makes clear that Zillow cannot ignore their license obligations and MRED’s reasonable rules that benefit all participants in our cooperative marketplace and undermine the value of the MLS.”
Zillow hasn’t enforced its pre-marketed listings policy in Chicago and will continue to not enforce the policy in that market in the wake of the Friday ruling, the company said.
MRED cut Zillow’s feed after the portal enforced its rules and refused to display a total of nine listings from Compass agents in Florida, Georgia and California. Those listings started as private listings before eventually being distributed widely via the MLS.
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin told Inman in a text message that Zillow must actively show those nine listings on the platform.
“Why is Zillow fighting so hard to ban listings? Because they want to control how sellers and their agents market homes,” Reffkin wrote. “We have a problem with that and so does the court with the judge ordering that all the 9 banned compass listings be entered back on Zillow and ordering Zillow to not ban listings from MRED going forward!”
Update: This story was updated after publication with additional statements and context.
