Zillow’s bold move to confront off-market housing inventory

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Last week, Zillow announced a new policy that bans home listings from appearing on the platform if they were first listed for sale in private networks more than 24 hours before appearing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

That’s an attempt by Zillow to keep more inventory on the “public” housing market.

“If a listing is online, it should be online everywhere. . . . If a listing is marketed to any home shoppers, it should be marketed to all home shoppers,” wrote Zillow.

The announcement comes as some brokerages, most infamously Compass, are pushing for more “private exclusives”—a strategy that allows sellers to market their properties privately within the brokerage’s network before or instead of listing them on public platforms like the MLS.

Over the past year, Compass has seen its inventory of “private exclusives” climb from just over 2,000 to nearly 10,000 active “off-market” homes for sale.

Zillow seemingly fears that the private listing market could soon gain momentum, so it’s using its massive influence—and the fact that it’s the go-to source for so many high-intent buyers—to try and throw cold water on private listings before they absorb too large of a market share.

On Saturday evening, CoStar CEO Andy Florance took a shot at the announcement, writing on LinkedIn that Zillow’s policy hurts home sellers.

“This week Zillow Executive Errol Samuelson announced that homes not listed on the MLS within 24 hours of public marketing—won’t be published on Zillow ‘for the life of the listing.’ Simply put, if your listing is not on Zillow within 24 hours, Zillow will retaliate against you and your homeowner by turning off your ability to list on Zillow. It is an incredible move of audacity and a pure power play of epic proportion,” wrote Florance.

CoStar, which owns Homes.com, is in the midst of a feisty battle that has been called the “portal wars” with Zillow and Realtor.com.

According to RISMedia, there is one loophole to Zillow’s ban: if the home seller fires their agent.

 “A seller who parts ways with their agent after using a private listing service and subsequently re-lists with a new agent or broker would be eligible again to have their property on Zillow,” a Zillow spokesperson told RISMedia last week.

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