Chicago Zillow Listings Disappear After Local Group Yanks Data
(Bloomberg) — Scrolling through Zillow for dream homes or apartments in Chicago will soon be a thing of the past.
The organization that manages residential real estate listings in the nation’s third-largest city and surrounding suburbs is a partnership between the listing giant and brokerage firm Compass Inc. suspended Zillow Group Inc.’s data access as part of what has become an escalating fight between
Local multiple listing service operator Midwest Real Estate Data LLC said Wednesday that Zillow was prevented from tapping into data on 43,000 properties because the website excluded a handful of homes previously offered in private listings. The move follows a federal lawsuit that Zillow filed last week alleging that MRED and Compass colluded to hide certain homes from buyers, harming competition in the residential real estate market.
MRED Chief Executive Rebecca Jensen said all listings must be displayed as required by the data licensing agreement.
“Our rules apply equally to every participant, and we have a duty to educate our participants and vendors, counsel them when they violate the rules, and require remediation of violations,” Jensen said in a statement.
As of 12:30 a.m. New York time, MRED data was still available on Zillow’s app, but the Seattle-based company said it had begun removing listings.
“Chicagoland home buyers and sellers have much worse access to the housing market this morning than they did yesterday because the local MLS decided that a mega-brokerage firm’s profits are more important than their ability to achieve the American Dream,” Zillow said in a statement.
An MLS usually requires a real estate license and membership to post a property listing. This data is then distributed to consumer-facing sites like Zillow and Redfin, where the public can view photos and information about the property. MRED said the dispute involved nine of 43,000 listings that Zillow refused to show.
Last year, Compass sued Zillow in New York, alleging the company used “anti-competitive tactics” with a plan to restrict certain listings. Compass dropped the lawsuit in March after a federal judge rejected its request to temporarily block Zillow from refusing to list homes first advertised elsewhere.
At the heart of the dispute is Compass’ effort to encourage sellers to market their homes to agents at the firm first. Zillow argued that there should be transparency and created a policy stating that certain publicly marketed listings would be blocked for more than 24 hours before being posted to a local multiple listing service. This means Zillow is removing Compass listings that were previously marketed only internally.
MRED said two weeks ago that Zillow told MRED it would begin excluding certain listings, and that the listing service told Zillow that those exclusions violated its licensing agreements. Zillow had until Tuesday to adjust to MLS.
Compass said in a statement before MRED pulled its listings: “Chicago has long been a model of an open, competitive marketplace that empowers homeowners while providing broad access to housing information. Buyers in Chicago should not be denied access to listings just because a platform disagrees on how a homeowner chooses to market their property.”
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