Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

IDX Survived. Compass Won.

IDX as We Know It Survives Thanks to MRED

“This is a BIG WIN for brokers in Chicagoland and everywhere.”

Marilyn Wilson posted that on the WAV Group blog the day after Judge Tharp denied Zillow’s injunction against MRED. The same day, her WAV Group co-founder Victor Lund published Two Cases, One Map on RETechnology, the news site WAV Group owns. Victor called Marilyn’s post “the right first read” and told every MLS to send Zillow a compliance notice and pull the feed if the listings don’t show up.

Neither post mentions that Victor Lund is being paid by Compass. In the spirit of disclosure, so is my Industry Relations co-host, Rob Hahn. Rob and I don’t agree on much of this, which is kind of the point of the show. Rob is clear about the relationship on every post he writes about this affair.

“Note: I have already disclosed that I have a business relationship with Compass. However, they pay for my time as a consultant, not my opinions. I bring it up again here because of the topic of this post, though all of the opinions herein are mine and mine alone. You are free to make up your own mind.”

I assume Victor has a similar disclosure somewhere. I didn’t see one on either post.

Both Victor and Rob do real work for this industry, and some of the compromises on the table right now exist because they pushed for them. But to me their interpretation is flawed. This ruling is less of a win for brokers and more of a BIG WIN for Compass.

First, the fair part. MRED earned the win. Objective criteria has been in MLS display rules since the 2008 DOJ settlement, and Zillow’s Listing Access Standards had a hole you could drive a truck through. At first I thought the tweak MRED made to its objective criteria definition in October was a red flag. The testimony changed my read. A banned listing came back to Zillow the minute the seller fired the agent. That looks an awful lot like filtering by brokerage. Judge Tharp found no agreement between MRED and Compass, and he found Rebecca Jensen objected to the standards before she ever talked to Compass about them. Zillow isn’t the hero of this story either. Its ad business needs every listing, and the judge noted the word “transparency” showed up more than 300 times in the briefs. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

So that leaves the part the congratulations card left out.

“Brokers everywhere” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. According to the court’s opinion, Zillow banned 1,390 listings under its standards. All but eight were Compass listings. The ban was the only thing that made a Compass Private Exclusive cost the seller something. Take it away and Compass gets both halves of the deal: a private window where its own agents can match the buyer and keep both sides, and full Zillow exposure as the backstop when that doesn’t work. Compass itself claimed the ban cut use of its three-phase strategy from 39% to 22%.

Compass tried to kill the ban in federal court in New York, lost the injunction, and dropped the case. Last October, Robert Reffkin emailed MLSs urging them to “block Zillow from IDX and VOW feeds.” Victor’s advice to MLS boards is that email with better formatting.

But, here’s what bugs me. After this ruling, a portal has to display every listing the MLS approves for distribution. The brokerage still decides when a listing gets to the MLS and which buyers get to see it before then. Cooperation became the portal’s obligation. Gating stayed the brokerage’s privilege.

To be fair, there’s a real compromise buried in all this. In Chicagoland, Compass agreed to put its Private Exclusives into MRED’s private listing network, where every MRED member can see them. In Seattle, the new NWMLS First Look status does the same thing for 21 days. That’s a lot better than a listing only Compass agents can find, because now a buyer’s agent at any firm can bring a buyer. But the visibility stops at the agent’s screen. A buyer without an agent still can’t see the house. And in Seattle, once the listing goes public, the days on market and price history from the quiet period stay off the public sites. Brokers got the listings back. Consumers got a later, sanitized version of them.

The funny thing is WAV Group published the best answer to all of this a week earlier. Daniel Jones’s Declaration of MLS Stewardship Principles, which WAV Group featured on its blog, says it plainly: “Marketing preferences govern a broker’s own channels. They do not govern the commons.” It also says a seller’s control over timing “does not extend to controlling who may see it.” Neither WAV Group post quoted it.

So, MLS execs. Read the order before you read the victory laps. Enforce your objective criteria rule if your license actually says it. And before you send Zillow that letter, make sure your own rules hold brokerages to the same standard. If portals have to show every buyer every listing, no brokerage should get to decide who “the right buyer” is.

The Consumer Won’t Fix This. The Lawyers Might.

The “Enshittification” of Home Buying

Brian Boero wrote a good one about how home search keeps getting worse and how nobody’s coming to save the buyer. He’s right that the buyer won’t save themselves. I just think he’s looking at the wrong rescuers.

“The Consumer is an abstraction; the empowered real estate consumer is largely a fiction.”

True. No consumer uprising is coming. People will put up with a worse home search the same way they put up with worse airlines and smaller candy bars.

Boero says “in time, the regulators may do something about it.” They already are. Washington passed a law that says listings have to be marketed to everybody. Connecticut and New York wrote the warning into the paperwork sellers sign. More states are lined up for January.

But regulators are the slow lane. The fast lane is the lawyers.

Last week the president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, wrote in Time that private listing networks are “more than an industry dispute. This is a civil rights issue.” His piece comes with numbers: sellers in majority-minority zip codes lose more when a home stays off the MLS, and MLS listings sell for around 17.5% more than off-MLS ones.

Read that again as a plaintiff’s attorney. You’ve got a protected class, a measurable harm, and a price gap you can put in front of a jury. And you don’t have to prove anybody meant to discriminate. A Texas broker laid the theory out back in March: under the Fair Housing Act, “You don’t have to prove anyone intended to discriminate.” Disparate impact does the work.

If that sounds familiar, it should. That’s Sitzer/Burnett. A theory, a damages number, and a sympathetic class. The commission lawsuits started as a fringe argument too, right up until they cost the industry billions and rewrote the rulebook.

So no, the consumer won’t fix online search. But three other parties are lining up to take a swing at it. The statehouses. A U.S. senator (Elizabeth Warren just sent Compass and MRED 23 questions about fair housing risk). And the trial bar, which just got its opening argument handed to it by the NAACP.

Boero says all this is “only good for lawyers and reporters.” Speaking as one of the “reporters”, I’d keep an eye on the lawyers.

A field guide to the private listings laws

Anthony Mannino wrote a tidy little explainer over at HousingWire, and if you’ve been trying to keep the state-by-state private listings rules straight, this is the one to bookmark. The laws are piling up. Connecticut just passed one. New York’s bill is almost across the line. Wisconsin and Washington already did it. Hawaii and Illinois are loading up for January.

Mannino sorts the whole mess into three buckets, and the buckets are the useful part.

Washington went with the mandate. List it publicly, period, unless there’s a real safety or privacy reason not to. No form, no signature, no disclosure to bury. Public exposure is just the default.

Connecticut and New York went with the opt-out, with the legislature writing the warning right into the statute. Here’s a taste of Connecticut’s language:

“The Seller understands that foregoing public marketing may reduce competition for the property, may result in fewer offers to purchase the Seller’s property and may adversely impact the final sale price and terms of the sale of the Seller’s property.”

Wisconsin and Illinois also went opt-out, but punted the actual wording to the associations and agencies. Mannino’s point on this is the sharp one. A warning written into law is hard to change. A form drafted by an agency is easy to change, which means it’s also easy to lobby.

And then he asks the question I’ve been asking. Do these opt-out forms actually stop anybody?

“…opt-out forms may prove to be more of a liability protection for brokerages than an impediment to executing a private listing strategy.”

There it is. He calls it “warning fatigue,” and anybody who’s sat at a closing table knows exactly what he means. You hand a seller a stack of agency agreements, consumer notices, and affiliated business disclosures, then slip in one more “the government makes me tell you this” page, and it gets signed with everything else. It doesn’t change behavior. It just protects the brokerage when the seller complains later.

Which is why Washington’s model is the honest one. If you actually believe public marketing is better for sellers, you make it the default and let people opt out for cause. You don’t make sellers initial a warning nobody reads and call it informed consent.

A form you can ignore isn’t a guardrail. It’s a receipt.

9 Listings

MRED cuts off listing feeds to Zillow

“Zillow has effectively decided not to display 99.98% of MRED’s listings on its platforms because it, in its own judgment, disagrees with the lawful marketing strategy associated with the remaining 0.02% of listings.”

Let that sink in. Nine listings.

That’s MRED’s line, and it’s a good one. But it works in both directions.

Zillow pulled 43,000 Chicago listings off its platform because it refused to display nine Compass Private Exclusives. That’s the hill Zillow chose. And honestly? I think it’s the right hill. Because if Zillow caves on nine today, it’s not nine tomorrow. It’s ninety. Then nine hundred. Then every listing that got pocket-listed first gets laundered through an MLS and shows up on Zillow like nothing happened. Zillow’s whole pitch to consumers is “see everything.” The moment they start making exceptions for Compass’s private listing machine, that pitch is dead.

But here’s the thing. Those nine listings? They’re not even in Chicago. They’re Compass Private Exclusives in California, Florida, and Georgia. MRED, a regional MLS in Lisle, Illinois, cut off 43,000 Chicagoland listings to force Zillow to display nine homes thousands of miles away. That’s also a hill to die on. And it’s a weird one.

MRED changed its own rules last October, after Compass CEO Robert Reffkin personally emailed MLSs across the country asking them to cut Zillow’s feeds. Then MRED went national with Compass as its first partner, with Compass subsidizing the first 100,000 agents. Then MRED demanded Zillow display Compass listings nationwide or lose everything. And when Zillow said no, MRED pulled the trigger.

That’s not rules enforcement. That’s a favor.

Now, Zillow isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart. Their “transparency” standards happen to protect a lead-gen business that made them $1.8 billion last year. They know that. I know that. But being self-interested and being right aren’t mutually exclusive.

The judge seemed to agree… sort of. The TRO put MRED’s listings back on Zillow but told Zillow it can’t exclude MRED listings either. Both sides claimed victory. Which means nobody actually won.

And that brings us back to nine.

Nine listings that Compass didn’t want on the open market. Nine listings that Zillow refused to display. Nine listings that MRED was willing to nuke 43,000 Chicago listings over. Nine listings that a federal judge had to sort out on a Friday afternoon.

Compass calls this “seller’s choice.” But when 72% of your private listings double-end and 68% of sellers say their agent never explained what private even means, that’s not choice. That’s a sales pitch wrapped in a permission slip.

I don’t know how this ends. But I know the number everyone will remember.

Nine.

MRED to shut off feeds to Zillow starting tomorrow

No Chicagoland Listings on Zillow

MRED Announces Potential Disruption to Listing Data Feeds to Zillow Group

“The rules of this MLS exist to protect every participating broker and every consumer who relies on a complete and accurate picture of the market,” said Rebecca Jensen, President and CEO of MRED. “Those rules apply equally to every participant, regardless of the size of their audience or the reach of their platform. MRED enforces its rules consistently and fairly, and hopes that Zillow returns to operating consistent with its longstanding agreements with MRED.”

Translation: Dracarys.

Seller’s Choice?

Inspired by a Facebook post on MRED’s website.

Dracarys

Compass International Holdings Gives a Data Feed of All of its Listings to MRED

“MRED is announcing nationwide expansion of its MLS service, including the Private Listing Network (PLN), to any licensed agent.”

“Compass International Holdings is also committed to subsidizing some of the cost of MRED access to the first 100,000 Compass International Holdings agents to join MRED as full members.”

Holy shit! A regional MLS in Lisle, Illinois just announced it’s going national. And the largest brokerage in the country is picking up the tab.

Let me back up.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Reffkin’s proposal for a brokerage-owned national MLS. At the time, sources told me he’d pitched the idea on stage of Brian Donnellan CEO, of Bright MLS leading the charge. Apparently that didn’t go anywhere. So Robert went shopping and found a willing partner in Rebecca Jensen, who has been running MRED for years and has never been shy about doing things differently.

I once compared Rebecca to Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones on Industry Relations. She’s been building dragons for a decade with the Private Listing Network, quietly, while the rest of the MLS world debated whether private listings should even exist. Now she’s burning the map.

This is MLS consolidation, but not the kind we’ve been tracking. Not two neighboring MLSs merging to save on overhead. This is a single MLS going national overnight, powered by Compass’s inventory and Compass’s checkbook. MRED goes from 250,000 listings annually to… what exactly? Compass alone does over a million transactions a year post-Anywhere. That’s not expansion. That’s a whole new animal.

Now let’s talk about what they’re actually offering. MRED says agents can “manage price history, days on market, and automated valuation models.” That sounds an awful lot like suppressing information that buyers would find useful. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a fan of less information in real estate. Full stop. But here’s my real question: is MRED still capturing actual DOM and price changes on the backend, just not displaying them publicly? Because if the data exists internally but gets hidden from consumers, that’s one conversation. If it’s not being tracked at all, that’s a much scarier one. And will other MRED brokers like their MLS getting so cozy with Compass?

Then there’s this line: “MRED also commits to protect and safeguard agents who participate in its PLN from being banned or penalized by third party portals and IDX feed recipients.”

Bold. Really bold. But how? Zillow has already shown it will punish listings that get marketed outside their ecosystem before hitting the MLS. What exactly is MRED going to do when Zillow bans a Compass agent’s listings? Send a strongly worded letter? File a lawsuit? Kick them out of the MLS? I’d genuinely love to know, because that promise is either the most important sentence in this press release or the emptiest.

Look, I see what’s happening here. Reffkin has been playing chess all year. The Redfin syndication deal. The war on Clear Cooperation. The national MLS pitch. And now he’s found an MLS CEO willing to go full Dracarys with him. Rebecca gets to go from running a midwestern MLS to running a national platform. Robert gets an MLS partner who won’t fine his agents for pocket listings and will actually fight the portals on his behalf. It’s a hell of a deal for both of them.

Whether it’s a good deal for everyone else… that’s the part I’m still working out.

Zillow Has Receipts

Zillow economist calls out Redfin for ‘mischaracterizing’ research

Zillow Chief Economist Mischa Fisher wrote that the analysis is modeled around assumptions, not hard data: “The estimate works roughly like this: take a share of sellers assumed to be uncertain about pricing, multiply by an assumed share who would benefit from early feedback, then apply an assumed relationship between listing confidence and eventual inventory. Stack those fractions, add a ‘multiplier’ for sell-then-buy chains, and you get 6-12%.”

So let me get the timeline straight. In February, Compass signs a three-year deal with Redfin to syndicate its Coming Soon and Private Exclusive listings. Two weeks later (two weeks?) Redfin publishes a study claiming pre-marketing could boost inventory by 6-12%. And some of the data Redfin cited to support this claim? Pulled from Zillow’s own surveys… which Zillow says Redfin “mischaracterized.”

I don’t think Fisher is wrong. The methodology is basically: assume a bunch of things, multiply the assumptions together, tack on a 1.6x multiplier for sell-then-buy chains, and Boom! You get a headline that just happens to validate the business deal your parent company signed last month.

Look, I get it. Every company funds research that makes their strategy look smart. That’s not new. But most companies have the good sense not to borrow their competitor’s homework and then get the answers wrong.

Redfin’s response? “We appreciate the engagement with our research and welcome discussion about the model and its parameters.” Which is corporate speak for “we’re not changing anything, but thanks for reading.”

This whole pre-marketing war has been fascinating (and frustrating) to watch. You’ve got Compass trying to build a parallel listing universe, Redfin handing them a storefront, Rocket greasing the mortgage side, and now they’re publishing research to justify the whole thing while Zillow’s economist is out here doing peer review on LinkedIn! Meanwhile the MLSs are watching their relevance get chipped away one “Coming Soon” at a time.

Fisher also pointed out what should be obvious: pre-marketing creates “information asymmetry” — meaning the buyers who aren’t plugged into Compass’s network don’t get to see these listings. That’s not boosting inventory. That’s just moving it behind a velvet rope, but also what I would expect the incumbent to say.

But who can tell?

NWMLS Isn’t Just Playing Defense Anymore

NWMLS Files Counterclaim in Federal Court

“We are standing up for the principle that every family has the right to see every home for sale, because housing data belongs in the sunlight, not in a private vault.” — Justin Haag, NWMLS CEO

Well, that didn’t take long.

Two weeks after Judge Jamal Whitehead denied NWMLS’s motion to dismiss — ruling that Compass had plausibly alleged antitrust violations under both the Sherman Act and Washington’s Consumer Protection Act — NWMLS has done exactly what it telegraphed back in December: filed counterclaims against Compass in federal court.

And they didn’t come in with some polite procedural filing. They came in throwing haymakers.

The counterclaims allege that Compass’s “3-Phase Marketing Program” violates Washington’s Consumer Protection Act — calling it a deceptive scheme designed to manipulate and hide critical data from the public. NWMLS is essentially arguing that pocket listings aren’t innovation, they’re consumer fraud. The specific allegations are pointed: artificially resetting days-on-market and price history to deceive buyers, suppressing the natural auction effect that gets sellers the best price, and actively encouraging Compass agents to violate their professional agreements.

That last one, contractual interference, is a big deal. NWMLS is saying Compass didn’t just build a competing system, it incentivized its own brokers to break their commitments to the MLS. That’s not a policy disagreement.

Here’s the part that really changes the game: NWMLS points out that Washington’s Senate Bill 6091, which takes effect this June, codifies the exact transparency standard NWMLS has enforced for decades — brokers must market properties broadly to the public and all other brokers. In other words, the state legislature looked at this fight and picked a side. And it wasn’t Compass’s side.

For those keeping score at home: Compass sued NWMLS in April 2025, alleging the MLS was a monopolist wielding its listing rules to crush Compass’s private listing strategy. NWMLS tried to get the case thrown out. The judge said no. And now NWMLS is swinging back — not just with “we did nothing wrong” but with “what you’re doing is illegal, deceptive, and bad for consumers.”

This is the first time an MLS has gone on offense against Compass in court. For years, the industry debate around private listings and Clear Cooperation has been fought through rule changes, press releases, and conference panel shade. Now it’s depositions and counterclaims.

The trial is set for October 2026, and with SB 6091 going live in June, Compass is about to be fighting a legal battle and a new state law at the same time. In the same state.

October is going to be fun.

Zillow announces revenue share program with RE/MAX, HomeServices of America, Side, and United Real Estate for coming soon listings

Zillow launches Zillow Preview to bring pre-market home listings into the open

“Revenue participation: If a qualified Zillow Preview connection results in a closed transaction through Zillow’s Preferred agent network, the listing agent may receive a share of the revenue Zillow earns from that transaction, paid through their brokerage. This fee is paid by Zillow and does not increase consumers’ or agents’ costs. As always, commissions remain negotiable between consumers and the agents representing them.”

I’m at the Clareity26 conference in Tucson and have been heads down preparing for a big announcement, so I haven’t had time to fully process the Zillow Preview news—or the other news that broke today regarding eXp. But I will.

One thing that immediately jumped out at me: Zillow is now willing to share a portion of its revenue on these coming-soon listings.

That raises a bigger question… is this a preview of a new business model for Zillow across all listings?

🤔

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