Thousands of Zillow Listings In Chicago Have Vanished
- Reference: 0183312098
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/21/2052220/thousands-of-zillow-listings-in-chicago-have-vanished
- Source link:
> There were nearly 5,000 Chicago homes listed on Zillow Tuesday, but as of Wednesday afternoon, that number plummeted to about 1,700. Meanwhile, other listing sites like Redfin and Realtor.com show about 5,000 to 8,000 listings in Chicago. MRED manages listings -- submitted by brokers -- throughout Illinois, as well as parts of Wisconsin and Indiana. The regional multiple listing service has more than 43,000 members and processed more than 264,000 listings worth $43 billion in 2025. The loss of listings on Zillow's websites have made a behind-the-scenes real estate industry fight public. And it now hinders some consumers in their search to buy a home, while also limiting the marketing opportunity for sellers.
The legal fight is basically over who gets to control how home listings are marketed and displayed online.
Zillow recently [2]adopted a rule saying that if a home is marketed privately, such as behind a paywall, login, or private listing network, it should not also appear on Zillow. The policy, the real estate marketplace says, is meant to discourage "pocket listings," preserve transparency, and make sure buyers can see the full market.
MRED sees it differently. It expanded its private listing network and partnered with Compass, which wants to give sellers more control over whether their homes are broadly publicized or marketed privately first. MRED argues that Zillow is violating MLS rules and licensing agreements by refusing to display certain listings, including private Compass listings. Consumers are now caught in the middle...
[1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/real-estate/2026/05/20/zillow-trulia-mred-listings-pln-chicago-vanished
[2] https://www.zillow.com/news/updating-zillows-listing-access-standards-for-todays-market/
Zillow is slow to aggregate Real listing data (Score:2)
Zillow is Slow & Behind on Data
A buddy of mine who is a realtor says that he always has a problem with people that call him saying that they saw house listed on Zillow giving him bullshit information and he tells them that looking at the actual local and regional real estate networks that are used by real brokers, those houses are listed for different prices and a lot of times those houses are sold and Zillow still shows them as being available 48 hours later where he has to field calls for the next two
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Those feeds all come from local jankily run MLS operations. Expecting data like that to be 100% is just not realistic.
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Maybe if you've already got 7 figures in the bank; you're not going to be earning much out there. It's probably a nice idea for retiring boomers, but other people need to work.
Re: Real estate market is a mess. (Score:2)
It's good to have dreams
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That's the latest incarnation of the American Dream, although you can avoid the morbid obesity part by taking weight loss drugs and spend the rest of your life looking like a player in NBA Jam's big head mode.
Realtor sleazerey... (Score:2)
... it's built right in.
Melody Wright (Score:2)
I recommend reading her substack to understand what's going on in housing
[1]https://substack.com/@m3melody [substack.com]
She does an interview here: [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://substack.com/@m3melody
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxjMN91pg5s
Is this the start of a redlining attempt? (Score:2)
Undoubtedly MRED and Compass are trying to double dip on commissions. But having a private, preferred network of 43,000 subscribers could easily be the beginning of redlining by offering some listings only to clients in "preferred" areas, and the other listings not in these areas to the general public.
Re: Having your cake and eating it too (Score:4, Interesting)
You shouldn't get to list a home "privately" to limit competition while still demanding access to Zillow's massive public traffic.
But that is exactly the hustle MRED and Compass are pulling. They want to hide listings in their "private network" of 43,000 insiders so they can keep transactions "in-house" and represent both the buyer and the sellerâ"pocketing both sides of the commission. Yet, they still expect public portals to advertise them.
Zillow's rule is basic common sense: if you want to hide a listing from the open market, you don't get to use the open market's biggest megaphone to do it. MRED retaliating by cutting Zillow's access and plummeting Chicago listings from 5,000 to 1,700 isn't about "seller choice." It's a coordinated boycott designed to force buyers back into a closed, high-commission gatekeeper system.
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Why not?
If I want to sell my house, why shouldn't I be able to sell it and advertise it how I want to? I could do FSBO or through a broker or through MRED, that's my choice. Why *shouldn't* I be able to access Zillow's advertising service and sell my house privately? Selling and advertising are two different things, there is no ethical reason to tie them together.
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> If I want to sell my house, why shouldn't I be able to sell it and advertise it how I want to?
You can. Nobody is saying you can't. That's not the problem.
> Why *shouldn't* I be able to access Zillow's advertising service and sell my house privately?
I think you're conflating the word "private" here. This isn't about you listing your home as a "privately" as a private individual, it' about MRED maintaining "private" (e.g. exclusive) access to that listing. MRED and Compass are monopolizing the
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No, I'm not conflating the two meanings of "private."
If I want to broker my house through MRED exclusively, and also advertise on Zillow, how is that a problem? If I don't want to broker my house through MRED exclusively, then I can actually list on Zillow or elsewhere.
The Amazon/eBay analogy doesn't fit. Neither Amazon nor eBay list products sold by the other site, at all. The analogy would be like Zillow and MRED not sharing listings with each other at all. A better analogy would be a Google Products list
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The article is discussing listing and brokering together, but they should be considered separately. You are conflating the two. MRED is not a broker. You can list privately, but then that precludes you from advertising on Zillow. The alternative analogy you are offering works if Google Products MRED and Amazon is Zillow, but you seem to think the reverse is true. And neither is the true seller, which is Compass, so your analogy betrays a gross misunderstanding of the situation.
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Compass is not the seller, you the homeowner are the seller. MRED and Zillow are simply listing services, i.e., places where you can advertise your home for sale.
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> If I want to broker my house through MRED exclusively, and also advertise on Zillow, how is that a problem?
"If I want to sell my shit on Amazon, and also want it to show up on eBay seareches, how is that a problem?"
It's a problem because Zillow doesn't want to give their business to their competitor. YOU, the seller, do not factor into it. Get fucked. This is why I said you're conflating "private." It's not about you. Nobody gives a shit about you, capitalist at the door should've told you. *shrug*
>
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> Why *shouldn't* I be able to access Zillow's advertising service and sell my house privately?
Because it's not your decision. Zillow is a private company and they can choose to exclude listings that are not available on the open market if they want to. Really... shades of "demanding freedom of speech on non-public forums" here.
MRED could make their own real estate search and advertising site and only show their "in-network" properties -- but they don't want to do that because, besides the actual expense of building and running their own site, they don't have the brand recognition that Zillow has. Th
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You're making the opposite argument than OP, who said, "You shouldn't get to list a home "privately" to limit competition while still demanding access to Zillow's massive public traffic."
If I want Zillow to list my house, I can list with Zillow and not with MRED. If I think MRED is a better deal and will get me a buyer sooner, I can list with them.
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> If I want Zillow to list my house, I can list with Zillow and not with MRED. If I think MRED is a better deal and will get me a buyer sooner, I can list with them.
Okay, but it sounds like you want to use MRED's service (where a potential buyer has to buy with a MRED agent -- because you are selling with an MRED agent) and still be advertised on Zillow. Zillow doesn't want to list homes that have that sort of buyer restriction on them.They want a buyer to be free to use any realtor for their side of transaction. This isn't an ethical dilemma, it's a business decision. Zillow is saying if MRED wants a website where they can list homes for their "insiders" scheme they n
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> They want a buyer to be free to use any realtor for their side of transaction. This isn't an ethical dilemma, it's a business decision.
Actually it's LAW. The buyer has the legal right to engage their own independent agent who represents their interests.
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> The buyer has the legal right to engage their own independent agent who represents their interests.
Zillow has the right to decide what they want to list, too. It's called the right to refuse service (I'm sure you've heard of it).
So unless MRED is an organization exclusively for black Muslim gay men from Nicaragua to sell their homes you're not going to get anywhere here.
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I don't have a problem with either Zillow's or MRED's approaches. They can fight it out.
I was objecting to the OP who said, "You shouldn't get to list a home "privately" to limit competition while still demanding access to Zillow's massive public traffic" I say, there's no actual problem here.
Re: Having your cake and eating it too (Score:2)
Maybe what's happening here is you're using a term differently. When the OP says "privately" he means through a transaction where MRED restricts it to themselves for financial reasons, and you're using it as "I'm selling my house myself, privately."
If you were selling your own home as the owner, Zillow would have no issue listing it, because you're the seller and you're going to deal with any buyer. But if you're having MRED sell your home you're no longer the seller (that's why you hired an agent to handle
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> you're using it as "I'm selling my house myself, privately."
Not quite. You're selling your house using a real estate agent who chooses to be part of the MRED network.
Your agent is not the seller, you are the seller. Your agent is your broker. Your broker may be a member of the MRED network, or not. MRED is just a listing service that your real estate broker will use if they are a member of the MRED network. MRED is neither the seller's agent nor the buyer's agent, they are just a place where you can list your home for sale.
If you use MRED (through your agent), only
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The argument is over the MRED desire to list internally on their *private* network of local agents (and via Compass listings) before making it public on Zillow.
MRED want to give their member agents a chance to sell the property first, before opening it up to the general public via Zillow. Compass lists properties publicly -but with a paywall ("like what you see? pay us to get the full details!")
Zillow wants to have the same (day 1 full info) access as the MRED (and Compass) members -or else Zillow won't ca