Exclusive Inventory Update And Zillow’s Catch-22
“Assuming the goal is to change agent behavior and reduce exclusive inventory in the market, the metric to watch is the number of Compass exclusive listings.
And here’s where it gets interesting: the number of Compass exclusive listings since Zillow began enforcing its policy is UP – by over 1,300.”
Interesting article by Mike DelPrete. His data shows a decline in Compass exclusive listings when Zillow announced the “ban,” and an increase when Zillow started enforcing the “ban” on private listings. I realize there’s a lot of nuance around which listings are actually “banned” from Zillow, so bear with me.
At first glance, it seems pretty weird and counterintuitive. Rob and I, on our latest Industry Relations podcast, argue about what’s happening. He thinks this means big trouble for Zillow. I think the opposite (big surprise).
My take is it isn’t very clear what data Mike is showing. Are these just new exclusive listings? Or are these total exclusive listings? The title of the chart says “Compass Exclusive Inventory,” so my assumption is it’s all exclusive listings, old and new. If that’s the case, then my argument would be that the reason the number of exclusive listings is rising at Compass is because exclusive listings aren’t selling that quickly. Therefore, stale listings are sticking around longer as new exclusive listings are added, which shows up as an increase.
Are they not selling quickly due to not being on Zillow or just the overall market shifted during the Summer?
Either way, the takeaway is that the data doesn’t always tell the story you think it does — and in this case, it might just be telling us more about Compass than it is about Zillow.
