CHICAGO—The CEOs of Compass and Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) each testified Thursday that Zillow executives threatened them directly over their companies’ resistance to its listing access standards, with MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen recounting a Zillow executive’s warning that she could expect her “phone to be dumped” and all of her “text messages to get out” if the dispute went in front of a judge.
Compass Founder and CEO Robert Reffkin and Jensen took the stand in the Zillow v. MRED and Compass preliminary injunction hearing before Judge John Tharp in the Northern District of Illinois, both denying Zillow’s central claim in the case that MRED and Compass conspired to cut off Zillow’s access to Chicagoland listing data.
MRED briefly cut Zillow’s feed back in May before Tharp stepped in with a separate order that also prevented Zillow from banning MRED listings based on its rules.
Simultaneous post-hearing briefs from both sides are due July 9, with responses due July 13. Tharp’s decision on the preliminary injunction will follow those briefs.
The hearing Thursday was the second of two days of testimony as Tharp considers whether Zillow can continue enforcing its listing access standards or whether MRED can once again cut Zillow’s listing feed off while the broader antitrust case proceeds.
‘Carrots and sticks’
Reffkin testified that on April 1, 2025, he met with Zillow executives after a former Zillow president—then an advisor—warned him he “should be worried,” telling him “Zillow has carrots, and they have sticks” if he didn’t stop marketing outside of Zillow. Zillow announced its listing access ban nine days later, on April 10, 2025.
At the meeting, Reffkin said Zillow CFO Jeremy Hofmann told him “we will not allow you to market listings outside of Zillow.”
Reffkin also testified he rejected an earlier Zillow offer of $1.3 to $1.6 billion tied to Compass’s marketing strategy—a revelation that had already surfaced as part of a previous legal dispute between Compass and Zillow.
Asked why he didn’t accept, Reffkin said, “My mom’s an agent…with every decision I make, I ask, ‘Would I do that to my mom?’” He added that Compass agents are independent contractors Compass cannot control.
On the human cost of the ban, Reffkin said Compass has “a client who is in hospice care” whose listing was banned, and cited agents who are “single parents” losing clients as a result.
“No one wants to get banned,” he said, comparing Zillow’s enforcement to “If Amazon banned anyone that had a private garage sale…It scares people…It’s effective.”
Reffkin, who is Black, also criticized Zillow’s framing of the litigation around Fair Housing concerns raised in earlier testimony. “I believe Zillow doesn’t care about Black people,” he said. “Zillow is suing MRED and Compass to protect their dominant market power.”
Reffkin defends three-phase marketing
Questioned by Compass counsel Nathan P. Eimer, Reffkin walked the court through Compass’s Three Phased Marketing (3PM) strategy, which the company started in 2024.
Phase one, Private Exclusive Listings, are “private from the World Wide Web,” Reffkin said, but are not behind a registration wall and do not require working with a Compass agent to access. He testified Compass hired a Fair Housing lawyer to design the search tool disclosing the existence of those listings, arguing “anyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, etc.,” can see they exist.
Phase two, Compass Coming Soons, was banned by Zillow beginning June 25, 2025, Reffkin said, describing the strategy as comparable to how “Apple would pre-market the iPhone before launching it.” He said homes marketed traditionally carry negative signals for buyers. “45% of the homes last year had a price drop. They all look like damaged goods,” he said.
Phase three listings—those that eventually go to the MLS—remain banned by Zillow if they started out as a Private Exclusive, he said.
Reffkin noted that Private Exclusives and Coming Soons were associated with a 2.9% higher sales price and 20% faster days to contract, citing an internal Compass document.
MRED’s national expansion; ‘free-riding’
Reffkin testified Compass supports MRED’s April 24, 2026 national expansion, calling MRED “the best MLS in the country” and arguing broader MLS competition benefits agents and sellers. Compass has given MRED a data feed of all its active listings, he said.
He also renewed Compass’s “free-riding” characterization of Zillow, arguing the portal “does not contribute a single listing to the MLS system” while extracting agent-created content for a fraction of its value, calling agents “the cheapest creators of content in the world.”
Under cross-examination by Zillow counsel Bonnie Lau, Reffkin faced repeated challenges to his direct testimony, including on whether Compass Private Exclusives require registration to access, and on a series of text messages with Jensen that Lau argued showed closer coordination between the two companies than Reffkin’s deposition testimony had suggested.
Jensen recounts ‘horrible’ call with Zillow execs
Jensen, MRED’s CEO since 2015, testified MRED suspended Zillow’s data feed only “after a year of conversation with Zillow, where (they) repeatedly told them that their Zillow ban would not be in compliance with our license agreement.”
Jensen attended both days of the hearing, seated in the front row, while Reffkin was only present for his relatively brief testimony Thursday morning.
Jensen said MRED’s objective criteria rule—which bars filtering listings based on brokerage identity rather than property characteristics—is modeled on a 2008 Department of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the National Association of Realtors®, and that Zillow is the only participant in her tenure to receive a violation notice and fail to satisfy it.
Jensen’s most pointed testimony described an October 15, 2025 call with Zillow executives Michael Lane and Errol Samuelson that she called “horrible.” She testified Samuelson warned that if MRED didn’t cooperate “you will leave no choice for Zillow than to litigate,” telling her to expect her phone records and texts to become public and a “public spectacle.”
A source familiar with Compass’s legal thinking said that generally, this type of testimony doesn’t make much a difference in terms of the legal standards both sides are seeking to meet, but could help rebut arguments previously made by Zillow that MLSs follow its policy because the rule is positive for the industry or consumers.
On cross-examination, Zillow’s counsel confronted Jensen with her own deposition testimony confirming she told Reffkin that MRED would revoke Zillow’s data feed if Zillow implemented its Listing Access Standards in Chicago—testimony that cut against her direct-examination framing of MRED acting independently.
Jensen was also pressed on an April 23, 2026 email in which she added language to the MRED-Compass press release committing MRED to “protect and safeguard agents” from being banned by “third-party portals,” which she said she didn’t recall drafting but confirmed sending.
Separately, MRED put out a statement characterizing the lawsuit as “just a breach of contract case,” and arguing that any harm to Zillow could be avoided by the portal “simply complying with…longstancing license agreement terms.”
Economist testifies feed cut would be “devastating”
Economist Lawrence Wu, testifying as an expert witness, told the court that Compass, MRED and Zillow all compete in an overlapping “listing creation and distribution” market, and that MRED’s decision to cut Zillow’s data feed “would have a devastating impact on Zillow and its business model.”
Under cross examination by Compass counsel Alec J. Solotorovsky, Wu conceded that Zillow has never enforced its listing access standards in Chicago and that, “to date, I have not” seen evidence of a resulting downward spiral in Zillow’s business there, adding “I think it’s too early to tell what would happen in the future.”
Economist Debra Aron testified that Compass and MRED don’t compete at all, that their relationship is vertical rather than horizontal, comparing it to authors and publishers who use the same tools without competing.
Tharp is expected to rule on Zillow’s request for a court order preventing MRED from cutting off its listing feed after all parties have a chance to file post-hearing arguments in the next two weeks.
