Home listings giant Zillow said it will ban homes initially marketed only to select buyers from appearing on its website, the latest twist in a long-simmering fight in the real estate industry over private listings.
“If a listing is marketed directly to consumers without being listed on the MLS and made widely available where buyers search for homes, it will not be published on Zillow,” the company said on its website Thursday.
Zillow’s decision comes after the National Association of Realtors announced a new rule meant to settle an industry fight over a policy designed to reduce semi-secret listings known as “pocket” or “off-market” listings. That rule gives sellers the option to delay broadly advertising their homes online while leaving in place a policy that requires agents to list homes on shared databases known as multiple listing services (MLS) within a day of beginning public marketing.
Zillow’s rules, set to take effect next month, would target homes that received limited public marketing like Instagram posts or exclusive inventory status on a single brokerage’s website without appearing on the MLS. Those properties would be banned from later being posted on its website “for the life of the listing,” the company said in a separate statement.
The MLS listing requirement, known as the Clear Cooperation Policy, has long sparked fierce debate within the real estate industry. Fair housing advocates and platforms like Zillow (Z) and Redfin (RDFN) have supported the policy, saying it aids transparency and helps sellers get higher prices for their homes. But other agents and brokerage executives oppose the strict listing requirement, arguing it limits seller choice.
Most home sellers want to market their homes to the widest possible pool of potential buyers. But a small proportion of sellers, particularly in luxury markets, seek off-market listings to maintain privacy or test their listing prices without having information on price cuts or time on the market visible to all.
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Compass, a brokerage that touts its access to off-market listings and whose CEO, Robert Reffkin, opposed Clear Cooperation, advises sellers to consider a “3 Phased Marketing Strategy” that first makes a property available only to Compass agents, then publicly displays it on Compass’s website as a “Coming Soon” property, and finally launches the property on the MLS and third-party listings services.
Under Zillow’s new rules, a property that receives any prolonged marketing to consumers without MLS distribution wouldn’t be eligible to be listed on the site.
