Zillow loses thousands of listings in fight over “hidden” homes - Ars Technica
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On Wednesday, Zillow abruptly lost access to thousands of property listings in the Chicago area after filing a lawsuit accusing a private listing network owner of colluding with the nation’s largest brokerage to harm consumers by hiding homes.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, hopeful Chicagoland home buyers browsing Zillow and Trulia suddenly saw significantly fewer listings. On Zillow, a nearly 5,000-home market dropped to about 1,700.
Thorough home buyers diligently checking every possible resource can still turn to other platforms, like Redfin and Realtor.com, which currently host between 5,000 and 8,000 listings, the Sun-Times noted.
But in an antitrust lawsuit filed last week, Zillow claimed that everybody buying or selling a home will be harmed if the alleged collusion goes unchecked.
Specifically, Zillow alleged that Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) and Compass, two “powerful players in the real estate industry,” have conspired to create “barriers to information that harm or threaten harm to sellers, buyers, and competitors by hiding real estate listings behind a velvet rope in a Private Listing Network (PLNs).”
As Zillow has alleged, MRED—Chicago’s multiple listing service (MLS) provider—“entered into a conspiracy” with Compass—Chicago’s dominant brokerage—to block platforms like Zillow from taking steps to increase transparency of available listings in the area.
“Rather than share all of its listings transparently—as its competitors do—Compass has sought to anticompetitively benefit from its dominance by hiding listings from anyone who is not working with a Compass agent in a PLN,” Zillow’s complaint alleged.
This allegedly “allows Compass to lure prospective home buyers to its brokerage with the promise of access to listings hidden behind a registration wall” and then maximize opportunity for profit by engineering “deals where its agents represent both sides of the transaction.”
In a statement to Ars, Zillow said that “Chicagoland home buyers and sellers today have far worse access to the housing market than they had yesterday, because their local MLS decided one mega-brokerage’s profits mattered more than their ability to achieve the American Dream.”
Zillow has requested a preliminary injunction to end the suppression of listings and other unlawful attempts to allegedly manipulate the home-buying market to disadvantage platforms that are pushing for more transparency.
Firms defend private listings
Challenging that, MRED has recently moved to force the legal fight into arbitration, alleging that Zillow’s antitrust claims are “meritless” and amount to little more than a contract dispute. The company also claimed that Zillow’s alleged harms are “self-inflicted,” since the platform knew that choosing to block nine listings of previously hidden homes would trigger a violation cutting off access to 43,000 listings.
In a press release, MRED said that Zillow lost access to its listings due to breaching its contract. The company also criticized Zillow, writing that “in a striking lesson in irony, Zillow has chosen not to display 43,000 MRED listings because it demands the right, and has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to secure that right—to exclude nine listings it disfavors.”
Asked for comment, Compass told Ars that the legal fight “is about whether homeowners have a choice in how they market their homes, or whether Zillow can set a one-size-fits-all policy for the industry.”
“Restricting listing visibility and penalizing agents for exercising lawful and strategic marketing options undermines consumer choice,” Compass said.
Defending sellers’ choice in how they market their homes, Compass said that it commends MRED for “enforcing policies that protect both consumer choice and the fiduciary obligations agents owe their clients. Buyers in Chicago should not be deprived of access to listings because a platform disagrees with how a homeowner chooses to market their property.”
Zillow Preview launch complicates fight
The real estate industry fight escalated in April 2025, when Zillow claimed that it “took a competitive stand” to protect consumers by adopting new Listing Access Standards designed to throw a wrench in schemes like the alleged MRED/Compass conspiracy.
Zillow hoped that by threatening to block “listings that had been previously marketed privately to only a select group of buyers and were withheld from all market participants” from appearing on its...