Zillow Clamps Down On Private Listings

Zillow has turned up the heat on the private listing cold war.

The listings aggregator announced a new policy that bans private listings from its platform as part of a standards rollout reinforcing the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy.

“When a listing is publicly marketed to consumers — whether through a sign in the yard, an Instagram post or on a brokerage website behind the lure of exclusive inventory behind a consumer login — it must be submitted to a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) within one day and published on Zillow and other sites that receive listing feeds,” a release from the company said.

Zillow said it would ban listings that don’t meet these standards for “the life of the listings.”

A spokesperson for Zillow said the company has internal tools to monitor listings that don’t comply with its standards, and that the ban will be implemented on a listing-by-listing basis. The rule will go into effect in May.

They added that sellers who re-list their home with a new agent or broker would be eligible to have their property appear on Zillow.

The policy comes amid heightened industry debate over the value of private listings — homes that are not publicly listed on MLSes or aggregators — that has pitted larger brokerage giants like Compass and Anywhere Real Estate against aggregators, MLSes and independent brokerages.

While Compass has been on the vanguard of promoting the use of off-MLS listings, several others have followed suit in the wake of a ruling from NAR that affirmed the use of private listings and allowed sellers to publicly market listings without syndication through the IDX feed.

Douglas Elliman and Corcoran, two of the largest players in residential brokerage, unveiled their private listing platforms in the past several weeks.

As part of the announcement, EXp Realty committed to putting all of its listings on Zillow and the MLS within one day of publicly marketing them.