Whether or not you’re in the market for a new place to live, you’ve probably spent some time on Zillow. It’s useful for getting a sense of what a city and town is like; there’s also an element of living vicariously to using it, which SNL memorably satirized a few years ago. In theory, you’d think that Zillow would mesh seamlessly with real estate companies’ listings. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
In a new article for Curbed, Kim Velsey reported on a rift between Zillow and companies like Compass over the latter’s forays into keeping some of its listings private. Compass views the idea of private listings as a benefit — including as a way to direct prospective buyers to use its website as opposed to Zillow. As Velsey pointed out, they’re not the only companies experimenting with this.
Zillow, meanwhile, has added a policy to ban listings that started out as private. They’ve also announced that eXp Realty has, according to Zillow’s announcement, “[committed] to posting listings in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) within one day of publicly marketing to consumers.”
“When all buyers don’t have the same access to home listings — and are forced to navigate barriers, possible bias and incomplete inventory — it undermines consumer trust and weakens the market,” Zillow’s chief industry development officer, Errol Samuelson, said in a statement.
Aspirational Zillow Browsers, Unite
The rush of scrolling through homes you’ll never own, as told by the people who do it every single dayAs Velsey’s analysis at Curbed noted, both sides in this dispute have argued that their stance is the one that ultimately benefits home buyers more. Will Zillow start to lose its lustre if it no longer feels like a one-stop destination for real estate listings? We might be about to find out.
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