By admin1
The MLS powering Chicago’s real estate market said that it would cut off its supply of listings that power Zillow starting at midnight Wednesday unless it changed its rules around publicly marketed private listings.
Chicago’s multiple listing service confirmed on Monday that Zillow would go dark in the region by Wednesday morning if it continued to enforce its policy around pre-marketed listings.
MRED said for the first time publicly that it would cut the property listing data feeds to Zillow’s platforms, including Zillow and Trulia.
The threat, which was alluded to in Zillow’s lawsuit filing against MRED and Compass International Holdings last week, comes in response to Zillow’s blocking of listings that originate in private listing networks.
Rebecca Jensen
“The rules of this MLS exist to protect every participating broker and every consumer who relies on a complete and accurate picture of the market,” MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen said in a statement. “Those rules apply equally to every participant, regardless of the size of their audience or the reach of their platform. MRED enforces its rules consistently and fairly, and hopes that Zillow returns to operating consistent with its longstanding agreements with MRED.”
It’s hard to say exactly what percentage of listings Zillow stands to lose if it doesn’t back down, though it is likely at least a third and likely much higher. A Zillow representative declined to provide that figure. Zillow wrote in its complaint last week that MRED controls around 98 percent of listings in the region.
Compass moved earlier this month to terminate its listing feed to Zillow for all of its brands, Zillow said in its complaint. The agents under that megabrokerage umbrella are responsible for over one-third of the listings in the MRED market.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY
The impending blackout would represent a dramatic escalation in the battle between Zillow, MRED and Compass.
“The choice to comply with MRED’s reasonable IDX and VOW rules — and avoid feed interruption — is Zillow’s to make,” MRED wrote. “MRED hopes that Zillow makes the right choice, for the sake of all of MRED’s brokers, agents, sellers, buyers and the rest of the MLS marketplace that relies on an orderly system of cooperation.”
In a filing made earlier on Monday, Zillow asked the judge in its federal lawsuit to stop MRED from acting on its threat.
The company said that MRED and Compass had forced it to make “an impossible decision” that would harm Zillow and consumers. In a new statement sent after MRED’s public threat to cut its feed, Zillow said that MRED was overstepping its bounds on behalf of Compass.
“If MRED follows through, Chicago sellers will lose access to millions of buyers, Chicago buyers can no longer see all available homes, and thousands of independent agents will lose leads,” a Zillow spokesperson said in a statement. “All to protect one brokerage’s hidden listing scheme in markets MRED has never served.”
MLS expansion wave
MRED is among a group of at least four large MLSs that have expanded nationwide and changed their rules to prohibit any of their members from blocking listings based on a brokerage.
Now that its reach is nationwide, MRED rules effectively seek to prevent Zillow from banning a listing that was publicly marketed while in a private status in markets far beyond Chicago.
Realtracs in Nashville, The MLS CLAW in Los Angeles and BrightMLS in the mid-Atlantic have also made rule changes and nationwide expansions in recent weeks. Each of the four MLSs also secured listing feeds from Compass as part of their expansions.
In its complaint, Zillow alleged that MRED threatened to cut its MLS data feed over its ban on listings that were in Florida, Georgia and California.
“MRED will not suspend Zillow’s data feed if it brings its websites into compliance,” MRED wrote.
