51����

Both sides also stand to make a lot of money if they win.

The issue intensified at the end of 2024, when Compass, the country’s largest brokerage by sales volume, began advising its sellers to use a three-phased marketing approach — making their homes visible only to Compass agents and clients as a “private” listing, making them viewable only via , and reserving the option to later make them public on popular house-hunting sites like Redfin and Zillow.

In the real estate industry, listings are currency. Faced with thousands of them disappearing from its site, Zillow punched back.

The Seattle-based company, starting at the end of June, said it  from appearing on its site — an ultimatum it hopes brings an end to Compass’s practice of selectively sharing listings before they appear on big search portals.  will follow with a similar ban in September.

Then Compass filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings. “The Zillow Ban seeks to ensure that all home listings in this country are steered on to its dominant search platform so Zillow can monetize each home listing and protect its monopoly,” Compass said in the lawsuit. A Zillow spokesperson said Monday that the company believes the lawsuit's claims are unfounded and that it will vigorously defend against them.

Each of these housing market players pitches itself as a pro-consumer brand. Compass says its selective marketing approach offers sellers privacy and control. Some sellers want to market to more exclusive groups before their home appears on big listing sites, which feature details like days on market and price cuts, which can signal a seller is willing to negotiate on price.

Zillow and Redfin say they are for transparency in the market, which is good for both homebuyers and sellers. The only way to know a home’s true price, they argue, is to advertise it as broadly as possible.

But Brian Boero, chief executive of 1000watt, a marketing agency for residential real estate companies, says their pro-consumer stances are largely just messaging.

“These companies are using the consumer as almost like a human shield here to protect their business interests,” Boero said. “They may believe these things sincerely, but this is first and foremost about rational self-interest.”

Should Compass win the private listings war, it would upend the paradigm in home listings that buyers have grown used to over the last two decades.

When Zillow and Redfin arrived in the mid-2000s, they promised to democratize the home search, pulling back the curtain on a market once controlled by agents and the local databases they operated called multiple listing services. For buyers, the experience changed overnight: Homes that were once buried in classified ads or hidden in books that could be viewed only alongside a broker were suddenly just a click away.

Sellers’ agents at first rejoiced — they didn’t have to work as hard to advertise their properties, and listing on the sites was free.

But someone was paying: buyers’ agents. When a prospective buyer clicks a listing’s “Contact an Agent” button, Zillow or Redfin sells that inquiry to a paying agent. They also take as much as 40% of the agent’s commission if they close the sale. Brokerages like Compass have long bristled at the steep fee.

But as home sales drag for a third straight year, Compass is trying to change the game. By publishing listings exclusively on , it cuts out the referral middlemen.

“Organized real estate has been implementing rules that have been stripping homeowners and their agents of flexibility and choice,” Rory Golod, president of Growth and Communications at Compass, said in an interview. “They are trying to monopolize where inventory goes and how people sell.”

Redfin and Zillow, of course, have their own interests to protect — as well as the model that’s come to shape the modern home-buying experience.

“This isn’t just about Zillow or Redfin — the internet has changed home search for the better, where every buyer can have access to all of the inventory,” said Joe Rath, Redfin’s head of industry relations. “Gatekeeping in any form is antithetical to the internet.”

Matt Kreamer, Zillow’s spokesperson, said transparency is core to Zillow’s philosophy: “We believe that home listings that are available to some buyers should be available to all buyers,” he said.

Their calls for openness also happen to preserve their business: more listings, more traffic, more fees.

Ultimately, Boero, the marketing chief, believes that Zillow’s market power will force Compass to blink.

“Zillow is the most powerful brand in the history of housing,” Boero said. “You just can’t imagine not having your home on Zillow as a home seller — it sounds like a stupid thing to have happen.”

But others see an opportunity for Compass to prevail in bringing traffic directly to its site.

“Southwest Airlines didn’t sell tickets on any of the online aggregators for years, and they’re doing great,” said Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech consultant. “People look at multiple sources.”

The dispute appears to be heading toward a compromise that would allow both Compass and the listing aggregators to uphold their business models, rather than a solution centered around buyers and sellers.

Redfin’s Joe Rath said his company would be open to hiding certain data, like days on market and price drops, if that’s what it took to keep listings public. “We would much rather give ground there and have the listing,” he said, “than not have the listing at all.”