It has been a challenging few weeks for Zillow.
The country’s most popular home-search portalis engaged in conflicts on multiple fronts. It is dealing with a surge of high-stakes legal cases, including an antitrust lawsuit from the federal government. Its efforts to slow the growing wave of “exclusive inventory— homes listed for sale but deliberatelystayed away from sites like Zillow— seem to have failed. And the company’s main competitor in this battle, the real estate agency Compass, recently revealed a huge acquisition that might increase its control over how homes are sold in America.
Zillow offers its users a nearly comprehensive look at the real estate market just by swiping on their phones. That promise is now at risk.Compass CEO Robert Reffkinis at the forefront of the movement toward amore fragmented futureIn which a greater number of home listings are first stored in private databases, accessible only to buyers who collaborate with specific agents. Reffkin claims this approach would provide sellers with more authority over where and how their properties are advertised. Zillow, along with numerous other industry players, contends that making listings widely available offers buyers a fair chance and helps sellers achieve the highest possible price.
It’s challenging to wager against Zillow. With over 220 million unique visitors every month, the company possesses the visibility, brand awareness, and market value needed to compete with any major players in the industry. “It’s difficult to dethrone the king,” Jack Miller, president and CEO of T3 Sixty, a real estate management consulting firm, says to me. “No matter what the weekly challenge is for Zillow, I still believe they are a formidable force.”
There’s no doubt that changes are happening. Platforms such as Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com have never been able to display for youevery home for sale — even in the digital era, agents have traditionally shared certain listings privately before making them widely available. However, no company has embraced this approach as much as Compass. The company’s website features thousands of listings that are not found on other platforms, and its planned acquisition of one of the nation’s biggest real estate firms could significantly increase this collection of “exclusive property.” At the same time, other real estate agencies are creating their own closed systems or threatening to do the same. Those supporting Zillow argue that we are moving toward a future where only a few major brokerages control most of the market.regulate entry to propertylistings, pushing out smaller competitors and making ittougher for buyersto locate their ideal residences.
That situation remains far from realization, according to Mike DelPrete, a real estate technology strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. However, Compass’s most recent major transaction represents another step in that direction.
If 10 years from now we’re reflecting on the past,” DelPrete says to me, “you might easily picture this moment and think, ‘Yes, that’s when everything shifted.’
The most significant legal challenge faced by Zillow is also the latest one. On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against the search company and its competitor, Redfin, regarding a $100 million agreement they reached in February. According to the deal, the two companies would exchange advertisements for multifamily rental properties (such as apartments and condominiums) on their websites and affiliated platforms, including Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com. The FTC’s antitrust complaint claims that the companies are making Redfin’s sites resemble Zillow’s listings, which undermines competition and increases costs for property managers and apartment seekers. A Zillow representative stated in an email that the partnership actually helps these groups and has “increased renters’ access to multifamily listings across various platforms,” assisting property managers in filling vacancies and helping renters locate homes. A Redfin representative echoed this stance, stating in a statement that the company “strongly disagrees with the FTC’s allegations.”
That’s not the only significant legal battle facing Zillow. In late July, the real estate company CoStar filed a lawsuit against Zillow for copyright violations and sought over $1 billion in compensation, alleging that the search company had used approximately 46,000 photos marked with CoStar’s watermark on its own site. Later, on September 22, two prominent plaintiff law firms — the same firms that have previously taken on…antitrust casesagainst the real estate sector led to a$418 million settlementand restructured the guidelines aroundagent commissions— initiated a class-action lawsuit against Zillow. They claimed the company was increasing real estate prices by steering buyers to collaborate with agents who pay Zillow up to 40% of their commission from a transaction.
It’s premature to determine the outcome of the FTC lawsuit. Regarding the other two complaints, there is a possibility they could result in significant financial losses for Zillow, but they are not entirely unexpected. CoStar, which operates the competing home-search site Homes.com, has had a prolonged conflict with Zillow. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into technology and eye-catching advertisements to enhance its search capabilities, yet it has not managed to significantly challenge Zillow’s market dominance. CoStar’s CEO,Andy Florance, has openly supported Compass in the dispute regarding property listings and, in April, notably criticized Zillow in an email sent to real estate agents.
Regarding the class-action lawsuit, the plaintiff’s law firms might have recognized a chance to target Zillow during a vulnerable time. Or perhaps they simply saw more potential after achieving a win against…The National Association of Realtorsand the biggest brokerages in the industry. Zillow, for its part, has promised to contest these allegations. In an email statement, a company representative stated that the complaint “grossly mischaracterizes how Zillow functions and the benefits we have provided to buyers, sellers, and real estate agents over almost two decades.” The response from the industry has largely been indifferent. A contracts law professor, who wrote on LinkedIn, mentioned that the lawsuit “is unlikely to go anywhere quickly.”
The conflict regarding real estate listings feels much more critical for Zillow. This is why the recent news that Compass finalized a $1.6 billion deal to purchase Anywhere Real Estate — one of the largest real estate firms globally and the owner of well-known brands such as Century21, Corcoran, and Coldwell Banker — overshadowed the legal challenges. The merged company, including franchisees and company-owned offices, would have approximately 216,000 agents in the U.S. and represent roughly 24% of the national sales volume according to 2024 data from T3 Sixty. Such a significant national market share is rare in an industry that has typically been fragmented, and it would likely provide Compass greater influence in its competition with Zillow. This advantage would be especially noticeable in cities like San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., where the Compass and Anywhere brands together easily reach between 30% and 50% of the market, according to T3 Sixty data. A player of that scale in a local market “can definitely change the rules,” Miller tells me.
At its foundation, this conflict revolves around access to homes for sale: who is able to view them and where they need to go to discover them. Compass’s Reffkin has been advocating for a “three-step marketing approach” over the past year, urging agents and their clients to promote properties solely on the brokerage’s website before listing them on industry databases called multiple listing services. These databases then distribute the information to agents, brokerages, and search platforms like Zillow. Most agents typically list homes on the MLS almost immediately after they become available. Compass, however, provides buyers who visit its site or work with its agents with an advantage when it comes to some of its most sought-after properties. According to Reffkin, this approach also allows sellers to experiment with pricing and gauge market interest before making their listings available on sites such as Zillow, which monitors price reductions and the number of days a home has been on the market—information he claims can put sellers at a disadvantage during negotiations.
Zillow has a strong desire to eliminate the three-phase model: Its search platform suddenly appears much less useful to buyers if major real estate agencies like Compass are keeping listings exclusive on their own sites. Zillow also argues that Compass’s approach is harmful to customers overall. In June, Zillow attempted to counter Compass’s efforts,banning listingsfrom its location that had been openly promoted for over one business day — such as a post on a broker’s website, or a sign in a front yard —withoutbeing widely shared in the MLS. Some executives I spoke to around this time compared the so-called “Zillow Ban” to a checkmate move, compelling agents to explain to their sellers why their homes would not be listed on Zillow. Compass responded bysuing Zillowin a federal court, asserting that the company was leveraging its dominant market position to suppress a new and creative business approach.
Here’s the situation: Zillow’s claimed enforcement doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. Reffkin and Co. are still proceeding with their three-part plan. A recent examination of Compass data by DelPrete, a researcher from the University of Colorado, revealed that the company’s amount of “exclusive inventory” remains steady despite Zillow’s updated policy — Compass has a collection of over 8,000 listings that aren’t available elsewhere, similar to levels in May. At the same time, the company is set to grow its closed system through the Anywhere acquisition.
In this legal battle filled with lawsuits and acquisitions, both parties still have many strategies to employ. It’s expected to take at least a year before the Anywhere deal passes through regulatory requirements and the agreement is finalized. Even after that, Reffkin will need to tackle the challenging job of promoting the Compass philosophy to thousands of franchisees and agents, whowork as independent contractorsand are allowed to switch to a different brokerage if they conflict with the exclusive-inventory approach or other aspects of Compass’s operations. DelPrete has long cautioned that the real estate sector could deteriorate into its own form of theentertainment streaming wars, with giants rushing to consume content for their own platforms. Accumulating exclusive “content” in real estate, however, is not as straightforward as it is in Hollywood. Disney can acquire Marvel, flip a switch, and make all those superhero movies available exclusively toDisney+ subscribers. However, “no one can compel a home seller to list their property as a private exclusive,” says DelPrete, referring to the listings that are kept tightly within Compass’s internal database. “Therefore, the most Compass can do is bundle it, enhance its value, and sell it.”
The reality is that sellers and their agents are used to listing properties in the MLS and, consequently, on Zillow. A research report from analysts at Citizens Bank, after learning about the Anywhere deal, projected that Zillow might lose approximately 1% of its listings on the site in 2027. However, they maintained that the company still holds its status as the “leading platform for home buyers.” This is the general opinion I come across within the industry. Zillow faced challenges this summer, without a doubt. But it will require much more to remove it from its top position.
That doesn’t imply that buyers and sellers can ignore this competition. At minimum, buyers should adopt a proactive stance in their home search by exploring various websites and, if they wish, locating an agent who has the resources to discover “hidden homes” within their area. Sellers should speak with their agents and make sure they fully understand the advantages and disadvantages of any marketing plan. Also, keep in mind that the home-search environment might change significantly in just a few years — not only for Zillow, but for anyone looking online for their next home.
Leave behind the details, the figures, and the statistics. Just rise to 40,000 feet,” DelPrete says to me. “The motivation for Compass’s unique inventory strategy is still present, and it’s growing.
James Rodriguezserves as a reporter for the Discourse team at Business Insider.
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