The MRED Zillow legal fight just hit agents and sellers directly

Real estate professionals across the Greater Chicagoland area awoke Wednesday to find their listings removed from Zillow, as the fight between the listing portal giant and the local MLS, Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), which already includes an antitrust lawsuit, escalated. 

On Wednesday morning, MRED announced that it was suspending listing data feeds to Zillow and Trulia after the portal allegedly refused to cure what the MLS called a “material breach” of its license agreements. MRED claims that, according to its licensing agreement with Zillow, the portal must display all of the listings MRED supplies it with. However, Zillow’s Listing Access Standards policy bans listings that are publicly marketed for more than one day before being available for display on sites powered by IDX or VOW data feeds, which resulted in nine listings in MRED’s data set being banned from Zillow.

Due to this, MRED pulled over 40,000 listings from Zillow, despite the portal asking the court in its antitrust lawsuit to stop MRED from taking this action.

As of Thursday morning, Zillow showed roughly 1,900 homes for sale in Chicago, compared to over 8,600 on Realtor.com and over 5,000 on Redfin. 

Agents in the middle

MRED’s decision to pull its listings has left thousands of agents in the middle of this dispute, forcing them to explain to their clients why their listing may not be on Zillow and why they won’t be able to see the area’s available inventory on Zillow. 

“It’s not lost on me there is a long history and genuine complexities in [this] battle. My frustration is that it’s working agents and home sellers who are paying the price with MRED cutting their feed to Zillow,” Nick Aufenkamp, the founder of DIY Homebuyer Academy and a Washington-based broker, wrote in an email. “If I’m selling my home in Chicagoland, I want it to be as visible and accessible to as many potential buyers as possible. As the seller, I do not care what my agent or their brokerage feels about Zillow and how they monetize leads. I just know that more potential homebuyers search on Zillow than anywhere else. Because it’s the biggest marketplace today, that’s where I want my home to show up above all else.”

As Carrie McCormick, a Chicago-based luxury-focused agent at @properties sees it, “the main issue is making sure things stay clear and consistent for buyers and sellers.”

“Real estate is already a complicated process, and when listing visibility or data sharing changes between platforms, it can create confusion around what’s actually available, where homes are being marketed and how that affects exposure and value,” McCormick wrote in an email.

With her clients, McCormick said her focus is always on ensuring that they understand “where and how their property is being promoted, getting the right level of exposure and adjusting the strategy as the market continues to evolve.”

“Especially in the luxury space, sometimes a more private or targeted approach can actually work better, while other properties benefit most from broad public exposure. It really depends on the property and the client’s goals,” she wrote. 

She added that for most sellers, getting as much visibility as possible is often key for driving interest in a property and that disconnects, like this one between MRED and Zillow, can impact how easily buyers are finding listings.

A direct feed to Zillow

While MRED has pulled its listings from Zillow, brokerage leaders do have the option of providing Zillow with a direct feed of their listings outside of the MLS. 

Compass International Holdings, which is the second defendant in Zillow’s antitrust lawsuit against MRED and the parent company of McCormick’s broker @properties, said on Thursday that it would not be providing Zillow with a direct listing feed. In a post on LinkedIn, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin wrote that his firm made this decision because the “way we can protect our clients’ data is if it’s entered securely into the MLS or directly into our platform.”

“Under Illinois law, brokerages are responsible for supervising how listings are marketed to consumers, and directly submitting listings to Zillow creates legal and regulatory risk for both the brokerage and agents,” Reffkin wrote. “Specifically, Illinois law prohibits advertising, ‘whether in print, via the Internet, or through social media, digital forums, or any other media’ that is ‘fraudulent, deceptive, inherently misleading, or proven to be misleading in practice.’” 

Regarding this, he noted that Zillow is currently facing a RESPA lawsuit accusing it of deceptive marketing. 

Berkshire, eXp go the direct listing route

But while McCormick’s listings are not currently on Zillow, those of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago agent Keith Brand are. This is because Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices already had a direct listing feed in place, so its listings in the Chicagoland area were not impacted. 

“It doesn’t really change anything for us — if anything it is a net positive for our sellers because it means more eyeballs on their listings,” Brand said. 

For him, the fact that his firm has this direct listing feed shows that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is more driven by brokerage operations and supporting consumers than trying to drive traffic and lead generation to the company’s website.

Like Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, eXp Realty already had a direct listing feed agreement with Zillow, meaning its listing are also still appearing on the listing portal giant, despite MRED pulling its feed.

“We built the backup plan. eXp won’t let MLS politics disrupt its agents’ business,” Wendy Forsythe, the chief marketing officer at eXp, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “If you search for properties for sale in Chicago on Zillow today you will still find eXp listings.

“If an institution chooses to weaponize its data feed in a corporate dispute, our sellers won’t lose visibility and our buyers won’t lose inventory,” she added. “The consumer’s experience should never depend on which institutions are in a fight this week.”

Impact is varied

But while agents like Brand are not impacted by MRED pulling its listing feed, he noted that that may not be the case for other agents, including buyer’s agents who rely on Zillow for lead generation. 

“The interesting thing about this is it impacts everyone differently,” Brand said. “But if you are a team, whose entire business model is catered toward lead generation through Zillow, this flips that model on its head.”  

For agents and brokers trying to help clients understand what’s happening, Aufenkamp noted that there are pathways for agents to have their listings added directly to Zillow and that they should “take this opportunity to reflect on the kind of marketplace they envision for the future and vote with their feet if their brokerage and MLSs aims do not align with their own vision for a fair and transparent housing market.”

To Aufenkamp, an agent’s first priority should be to sell their client’s home. 

“Whether they like it or not, Zillow is one of, if not the most, powerful marketing tool to get exposure for their seller’s listing. For a brokerage/agent to prioritize lead capture over market exposure seems to me to be a violation of fiduciary responsibility,” he wrote. “I think that’s the tension a lot of agents and sellers in Chicagoland are feeling today. And while I don’t know who wins this fight, I know Chicagoland sellers are losing today.”