Thousands of Chicago-area Zillow listings disappear amid dispute with Midwest Real Estate Data
Tens of thousands of Chicago-area home listings have disappeared from Zillow amid a dispute with Midwest Real Estate Data, which cut off access to its database.
The two companies are locked in a dispute over private listings, where homes are marketed to select buyers and brokers before appearing publicly online.
Zillow recently adopted a policy that would ban any listing that did not appear on their platform within 24 hours of hitting the market. MRED argues the rule unfairly targets the Compass brokerage, which they've partnered with to create a nationwide private listing network.
Zillow has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit as part of the dispute. In a news release, MRED said the lawsuit is over nine listings that were listed privately by brokers before going up on Zillow. The company argues Zillow is trying to impose its own rules on listings they say are "lawfully marketed under MRED policies and at the discretion of sellers and their brokers."
MRED said Zillow's primary concerns are about their "ability to sustain monetization of consumer traffic and agent leads," and said the online platform "claimed the excluded listings are 'stale' and inconsistent with its 'brand promise.'"
Zillow, in turn, claimed in a response on their website that MRED rewrote their data licensing agreement last October "specifically to block Zillow's transparency standards," that those rules didn't exist when Zillow signed its agreement with MRED and accuses MRED of changing them "after Compass CEO Robert Reffkin personally emailed MLSs across the country urging them to cut off Zillow's feeds."
Zillow also claims the disputed listings were all Compass Private Exclusive listings in California, Georgia and Florida, not in the Chicago area where MRED operates.
"They're demanding that Zillow display any listing that was first hidden from buyers, no matter how many, no matter where. If Zillow agrees today, the number tomorrow is not nine," the company wrote on their website.
Zillow has asked a federal court to restore the listings.