Zillow loses thousands of listings in fight over “hidden” homes | Zillow asked for a preliminary injunction as real estate industry fight heats up.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/zillow-loses-access-to-thousands-of-home-listings-amid-bitter-legal-feud/
15 Comments
I find this pretty interesting, but I’ve been in the industry for a few decades now.
Many years ago MLS systems would keep their information private/confidential ‘members only.’ Someone sued, maybe zillow, I have tried to find the lawsuit and it is so old it won’t come up for me. There was a settlement where NAR or maybe a consortium of MLS systems (because they are all independently owned) settled the lawsuit by agreeing to make their listing info publicly available for (IIRC) 10 years.
When those 10 years were up, I guess business was so good no one cared to try to take the information private again. I was kind of surprised, but more information is better for the public imo. This was still many years ago, 2012-2015?
So I wonder why now, this system decided to try this.
If I were someone selling a house and listing in an MLS system, I would insist the realtor share the listing with zillow. That should be an option you are presented. Sellers want the most exposure possible, so it’s stupid to keep that info private. If an agent won’t agree to that then don’t hire them.
Why anyone is using a realtor to sell or buy a house is beyond me.
They dont do shit to ensure anyone is protected. They play stupid over everything for their own protection. They are paid way too much for what most do.
If you have questions about the house you are buying you should use a house inspector, not a realtor, nor an appraisal person.
If you are selling it, do some comparisons and list it. If its too much, give it time and then lower it.
“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.”
Lmaoooo. That is quite an uphill road for Zillow to convince anyone that they give even a single shit about harm to consumers.
Just be honest that it hurts your profit and market penetration, Zillow. Some of these companies are such babies.
There’s a house for sale around the corner and it disappeared from Zillow this week and yet the for sale sign is still up. It was weird cause you can’t even click on the address like for all the other off-market houses…you can’t click at all, it doesn’t exist suddenly. I am so glad I saw this post and thus have an answer.
There’s plenty of houses on zillow that I can’t look at because I’m not logged into a zillow account on the app.
I assumed that was a listing realtor thing.
It is crazy that sellers voluntarily contract with brokers that will hide their listings from the public.
It’s funny cuz zillows model is when you click “contact seller” on Zillow it goes to a company who pays them for leads and gives them 30% of the sale commission.
It sounds like some brokers said “we don’t agree with those excessive terms” and because Zillow is now at a disadvantage to Realtor and other competitors, they’re mad because they cannot back door themselves into deals by connecting buyers to sellers for just reposting an MLS listing and claiming a 30% finders fee.
Seems like the free market and they need to change their model if they wanna play.
It’s probably better for everyone other than Zillow.
Fucking hate Zillow and all them websites. Get my homes pictures off your website!
I’m just going to throw this out there but maybe… just maybe.. they are all just a bunch of twats looking to bleed homeowners and homebuyers for every cent they can get. Zillow included.
I saw an instagram ad from Compass yesterday gloating about how Zillow can’t see certain listings and so I should use them instead.
Ironic how the land of the free has the least free marketplace on earth. Litigation now just an expected cost of doing business. You can get sued for literally anything
Close to 50% of the houses in our area, when we were looking were done either completely through private listings, or the private listings allowed a huge head start on the process. Once you get the right realtor it’s like a cheat code.
Just waiting for Zillow to have a one click “buy now” button. Who needs brokers, agents or commissions.
When I bought a house in texas a couple years ago, it definitely seemed like a lot of house sold before they hit MLS. They were brokered within the large realtor groups before they hit the broader market.
This seems like a bigger version of that.
Fuck zillow and making prices raise like a rocket. My home shouldn’t be worth 800k its so un affordable for the younger generation.