Zillow’s move to ban private listings has sparked intense debate across the industry. For some, it’s the logical next step toward protecting consumers and increasing market transparency. For others, it’s an audacious flex of market dominance.
As the dust settles, industry leaders are grappling with the implications and weighing the benefits of widespread adoption against the cost of change.
Its implementation of the National Association of REALTORS® recent Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) change—which allows MLSs to prevent listings from being “syndicated” to consumer platforms and challenges large brokerages—Zillow’s new “listing access standards” essentially ban properties previously marketed to a limited audience from being available on Zillow platforms.
For sellers to have their listing posted on one of the largest consumer-facing real estate platforms, the publicly marketed listing must be on the MLS within one day and published on Zillow as well as other sites that receive MLS feeds. This change, designed to maximize market exposure and ensure Fair Housing practices, goes directly against brokerages that have made office exclusives—in which brokers market listings privately within their networks—their norm.
eXp Realty and NextHome, so far, are the only brokerages that have publicly committed to Zillow’s new listing access standards.
‘That’s not how capitalism works’
A “staunch supporter of, and a fierce protector of the American consumer,” James Dwiggins, CEO and co-founder of NextHome, thinks it’s a bad policy to “push sellers into thinking” that marketing their property to a smaller audience will give them the same market opportunity as “opening it up to anyone and everyone.”
NextHome, says Dwiggins, is “supportive of putting properties out in the biggest real estate marketplace in the world.” Although the company has “never done” office-exclusives, Dwiggins said that if there is a use-case where it needs to be done, they will look at it.
“We’re very supportive of Zillow in this; they’re enforcing the rules of CCP,” he says. “If somebody wants to do an office exclusive, they still have the ability to do it, but you can’t market it publicly and not make it available to everyone.”
Regarding seller privacy—which Coldwell Banker Realty’s President and CEO Kamini Lane called “paramount” in an op-ed detailing how marketing to a limited group of people is appropriate in some cases—Dwiggins told RISMedia, “This whole seller privacy thing is a complete ruse.”
“Seller privacy has existed in the MLS for as long as I can remember. You cannot display the address. You can shorten the number of photos that are there. There are lots of options to protect seller privacy that already existed—which somehow got lost in this debate,” he says. “It’s never been about seller privacy; It’s been about convincing sellers that there’s another way to do things to get the same results, and it’s just not true.”
Even in the case where a home is being sold internally, like to a neighbor, it doesn’t need to be an off-market deal, says Dwiggins.
“You are opening yourself up to potential liability for Fair Housing violations. We don’t know how it’s been marketed, where it’s been marketed. We don’t know who’s been excluded from it. Because that’s literally what a private listing network is—the word ‘private’ means exclusionary by definition,” he says. “I think everything should be on the open market.”
Removing potential liability is another reason to list homes on the open market. If you have a client thinking, “Well, my agent said we didn’t need to put it on the MLS, and then I didn’t realize I could have potentially gotten more money from my home,” you could end up in a lawsuit, adds Dwiggins.
The best way to figure out the potential value of a property is to put it on the market and let the market tell you, says Dwiggins. If a buyer offers more money than what the seller initially wanted, they aren’t going to turn down the extra money. “That’s not how capitalism works,” he adds.
Comparing the concept to the auto sales industry, Dwiggins makes the point that even though car dealerships have their inventory available on their website and to the local market, they still “put their inventory on Autotrader, the equivalent of Realtor.com and Zillow.” They do that to advertise to potential buyers in other states or people looking for a specific model.
“Open it up to the entire market and let the buyers tell you what they’re willing to pay for it. That’s why Facebook Marketplace exists. That’s why eBay exists. That’s why these websites exist. That’s why it’s available for real estate. The list goes on and on.”
With this change, Dwiggins hopes that this causes agents to rethink their practice regarding office-exclusives. If they had a conversation with a seller and explained to them what office exclusives meant and how they would not be able to have their listing on Zillow or Trulia, “99% of sellers” will want to go another way.
The informed-consent disclosures will force agents to have that conversation with their sellers, allowing them to make informed decisions as to how their home will be sold.
What do sellers think?
eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja, having sold real estate his entire adult life, has firsthand experience of how many sellers ask for off-MLS listings for privacy reasons.
“I sat at the kitchen table and had these conversations with sellers, and I can tell you that the amount of people that said they wanted privacy or not to be on the MLS is a handful of people—and I did 4,000 transactions,” he says.
There are certain examples where a seller “truly doesn’t want to be anywhere” to protect their privacy, adds Pareja. “A federal judge overseeing a human trafficking case or a DEA agent in a border town like El Paso (…) I can think of only a few. Tenant-occupied properties, where if a tenant sees the property being advertised, they can freak out and stop paying their rent.”
Given that this is such a minute part of the market, Pareja says, that’s why eXp took this position with Zillow.
“If it’s fully off the market and nobody wants to see it anywhere, and you’re trying to see if it can get some interest, we have a solution for that, that is CCP-compliant, and we’ve had it for years,” Pareja says, referring to eXp access, for sellers who need absolute privacy.
But to “steer” every seller into off-market listings, adds Pareja, is to harm and mislead sellers.
“I think we need to be fiduciary, and if everyone took that same position, the transparency and the liquidity and the access to data and real-time information that this country enjoys disappears,” Pareja warns. “It collapses, and we look a lot more like Europe, South America and Asia, where there are six to eight different websites you have to go to, and that’s only for a fraction of the information.”
Although it’s a small portion, Pareja says that there is a small voice of “selfish companies that are doing this purely for monetary gain, and it’s extremely harmful to the American consumer.”
‘Bullied by a tech platform looking to control an industry’
Andy Florance, founder and CEO of CoStar Group (parent company of Homes.com), had a starkly different view on Zillow’s recent change.
In a letter sent to his agents, Florance called this new policy “an incredible move of audacity and a pure power play of epic proportion.”
A self-serving move, he said this is Zillow protecting its ability to profit from listings by selling leads to competing agents—not to protect consumers.
Regardless of one’s support of the CCP, Florance adds that it’s unacceptable for these portals to “threaten agents this way. We believe every real estate professional deserves
to be treated with fairness and respect—never bullied by a tech platform looking to control an industry.”
Calling the new lead-diversion model anti-consumer and anti-agent, Florance said it “hijacks (listing agents’) hard-earned listings to generate commission splits for them and grow their brand at your expense.”
Emphasizing Homes.com’s commitment to an agent-friendly approach, “Your Listing Your Lead,” Florance says that his platform only displays the listing agent’s name and connects potential buyers to them.
Assuring agents who choose to abide by Zillow’s new policy, Florance said they will still be able to have their listing on Homes.com and the other sites.
In a P.S. statement ending his note, he encouraged agents to consider the broader implications of Zillow’s policy, stating that “Zillow’s heavy-handed attempt to use their market power” is anti-competitive. To make it easier for agents, Florance included a hyperlink to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.
Making waves
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman is taking Zillow’s approach, advocating for buyers being able to view all listings, with Redfin.com not publishing any listings that have been publicly marketed before being shared with all real estate websites via the MLS.
His twist on Zillow’s policy includes the “Coming Soon” designation for listings.
“To encourage home sellers to market their listings via the MLS, Redfin is also asking MLSs to create a coming-soon designation for listings that precludes search sites from showing how long a home has been for sale and at what prices,” Kelman shared in a statement. “Other brokers have supported the idea of coming-soon listings, but with access limited to agents, and potentially only to their own agents. This violates the principle established in the last great real-estate anti-trust battle, settled in 2008, that all brokerage customers should be able to see all MLS listings, online or via an agent. And that principle exists for a reason: once brokers give our clients control over how their listing appears online, every client will want that listing to appear everywhere.”
Following Zillow’s announcement, Realtor.com is “giving the topic thoughtful consideration,” according to a spokesperson from the company.
“We firmly support listing cooperation—it ensures buyers see more homes, sellers get maximum exposure, and the market stays fair and competitive.”
Industry reactions
Darryl Frost, a spokesperson on behalf of Keller Williams, told RISMedia that in their 1,000-plus franchises serving over 163,000 agents and their clients, each office has brokers who, together with their agents and clients, decide what’s best for each individual transaction.
“We believe it is up to our franchisees and agents to advocate at the local level for the policies they believe best serve their clients,” Frost said. “This is why KW is the No. 1 real estate franchise as measured by agent count, closed transactions and sales volume. We welcome any real estate professional who wants to join this culture of agent empowerment.”
A spokesperson from Anywhere Real Estate offered the following statement.
“We applaud efforts in our industry to preserve broad access to listings for consumers. While we have long advocated for reform of Clear Cooperation to allow for additional flexibility for sellers, we do not believe that it should come at the expense of widespread transparency for buyers. Our agents continue to have the ability to publish listings on MLSs and public portals, but, as we have said, we will also ensure that they are never disadvantaged if the market moves in favor of private listings.”
Colette Stevenson, CEO of REsides, a South Carolina-based independent MLS based, gave RISMedia the following statement.
“The core flaws with the CCP were there from the start and required immediate action to provide a solution. This was compounded by the growing conversation around ‘coming soon’ listings, with discussions about listings being withheld from the MLS happening as far back as 2014,” she said. “Too often, industry policies like CCP are created in a vacuum without asking the most important question: what actually works for brokers, agents, and consumers?”
Further, she said that Zillow and Redfin’s move to ban private listings “is just the first ripple in a much larger wave of industry change. It begs the question—since Zillow and Redfin are defined as brokerages and marketing platforms, will this open the door for legal ramifications?”
Compass and the National Association of REALTORS® declined RISMedia’s request for comment.
Note: This story was updated on April 16 to include Colette Stevenson’s statements.
How is it ok that Zillow and Realtor.com are allowed to take my hard earned listing’s leads and “sell” our listing leads to other agents for a profit? See NAR’s Top Executive Salary Details Below…
NAR COMPENSATION & INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR EXPENSES FOR 2023
BOB GOLDBERG (CEO) — $3,002,748 + $56,976
MARK BIRSCHBACH (Strategic Business Innovation & Technology) — $1,067,775 + $56,976
SHANNON MCGAHN (SVP, Government Affairs) — $1,070,027 + $56,976
KATIE JOHNSON (General Counsel) — $1,110,113 + $56,976
LAWRENCE YUN (Chief Economist) — $817,931 + $56,976
JOHN PIERPOINT (Chief Financial Officer) — $794,320 + $56,976
VICTORIA GILLESPIE (Chief Marketing and Communications Officer) — $524,066 + $56,976
DONNA GLAND (SVP, Talent Development Resources) — $657,355 + $56,976
MARC GOULD (SVP, Member Development) — $706,679 + $56,976
Do you think it’s possible that the pirate organization we know as Zillow is colluding behind the scenes with the NAR Cartel and this is all another smoke screen to draw our attention away from NAR’s sins against real estate agents?
National Association of REALTORS® declined RISMedia’s request for comment. Says a lot.
Great comment, agree with every word and thanks for posting their salaries. In the old proprietary Mom & Pop days, these trade organizations may have had some value. Now they sell leads, distract & divert buyers to other listings & brokers, and make up rules. And we pay them for it 🙁
By Pareja’s own admission, some sellers want to sell off market. Would it be a complete surprise if that very same seller’s motivation changed and they decided to expose their property to the broader market? Every agent that’s done a fair amount of business has come across a seller whose motivation wasn’t driven by the highest sale price. Let’s stop saying this is all for the consumer’s benefit and call it what it is: an attempt to force more listings to their sites and drive revenue.
100%
My Take on Zillow’s New Policy: Who’s Really Being Served?
As a licensed real estate broker for over three decades, I’ve worked through every market — highs, lows, booms, and crashes. But one thing has always remained true: the seller owns the home, and they should control how it’s marketed.
That’s why Zillow’s latest policy is both tone-deaf and self-serving. Their new rule — banning any listing from their platform for the entire life of the listing if it’s marketed anywhere before being entered into the MLS within 24 hours — isn’t about transparency. It’s about protecting their business model, not sellers or buyers.
Let’s be clear. Zillow is no longer just a search site — they’re a registered brokerage. They pull listing data from the IDX feed, which exists to widely share listings with agents and consumers alike. But Zillow doesn’t operate like your local, boots-on-the-ground agent. Their profit comes from selling leads. The more listings they have, the more leads they can generate — and the more money they make selling those leads back to the same agents who provided the listings in the first place.
If transparency and buyer opportunity were truly their concern, I have one question: Where was that transparency when Zillow was directly buying homes from sellers under their now-defunct iBuyer program? They gave sellers an “instant offer” and skipped MLS entirely — no public exposure, no competition, no agents representing the best interests of the seller. They weren’t worried about visibility then. They were flipping homes for profit — until they lost hundreds of millions of dollars doing it.
So now, instead of supporting listing agents — the very people who built their inventory — Zillow punishes them for honoring a seller’s request to pre-market their home. Maybe that seller needs time. Maybe their circumstances call for a slower roll-out. Maybe their agent is doing exactly what they were hired to do — test the waters, create interest, and build a plan. And has every intent to ultimately place the listing in MLS. So Zillow wants to ban this sellers home? But what about offering every listing to buyers? I guess the only listings that matter to a buyer are those Zillow deem worthy under their new rules.
This isn’t about keeping listings “in-house.” This is about honoring seller intent. About strategy. About timing. About life.
Under Clear Cooperation, we already lost the ability to do “coming soon” marketing the way we used to. And now Zillow, with a straight face, tells us that the only path forward is their way or no way — while claiming it’s all for the seller’s benefit. That’s not transparency — that’s corporate control.
Zillow became a powerhouse because of the hard work of listing agents and the trust of sellers. Now they want to punish those same agents for doing what’s best for their clients?
No thank you.
Sellers deserve options. Agents deserve respect. And Zillow needs to stop pretending they’re the moral authority in real estate — when what they’re really doing is just protecting their pipeline of leads.
No agent in their right mind would use the Delayed Marketing status so it doesn’t really matter at all.
If a seller wants to market privately, they can, BUT they should do so until the listings expiration or until the Agreement is cancelled. I feel like Zillow is saying, you want to be private, be private. Don’t test the waters and try to list a home at an inflated price while not counting days on market, then when it doesn’t work out, relist at a lower, more market friendly price and then share through the IDX as if the property was listed for the first time.
I find it funny that this is being marketed as “more options for sellers”, I don’t buy it. These large brokerages want to keep the deal in house and capitalize. Sellers losing undivided loyalty is not an option that most would choose, and that’s exactly what a private listing sets the stage for. You’re going to tell me that a fellow agent under the same brokerage name is going to suggest a lower price or appropriate market price for their buyer, especially when the brokerage is offering a bonus for an in-house deal….ok.
Everyone is talking about the sellers options…..WHAT ABOUT BUYERS OPTIONS?????
With historically low inventory if national brokerages that have thousands of agents nation wide can convince a seller that it benefits them to list Private, because they can test the market at an inflated price without sacrificing days on market or the publics knowledge, and the seller buys the agents pitch, that puts fewer listings on the national and local markets, decreases inventory and ultimately increases the price of housing. It all comes down to supply and demand, and if buyers have less supply to choose from the cost of housing will continue to increase.
There is nothing wrong with a private listing, but it should remain private for its entirety and if it’s status changes to public, those days on market should be counted and any price decreases or increases should be shown. That’s just my opinion, maybe I’m in the minority.
Lastly, what about the smaller independent brokers and mom & pop brokers? Not all of us want to be part of a franchise and we want to run our brokerages with the vision we have and the rates we are willing to charge, not some corporate vision that forces you to have ridiculous splits and pay franchise fees and walk away with peanuts. Sorry, that’s why I am out on my own. I and my agents, when I get them, will be free to negotiate in the manner we/they deem necessary.
I don’t know what is going on a NAR and what they are thinking but this is just another lawsuit waiting to happen. Again, my opinion, maybe I’m in the minority.