Huge MLS Pulls Out of Zillow in a Tiff

Chicago-area homeowners may be in for an unwelcome surprise the next time they fire up Zillow: A huge swath of local listings has vanished. Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), the multiple-listing service for the region, has yanked roughly 43,000 listings from Zillow in parts of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, accusing the site of breaking its rules. The move pits the country's most-visited real estate site against a powerful local data provider and threatens to complicate how buyers and sellers find each other, reports the Wall Street Journal.

At the heart of the fight is the industry's simmering battle over "private" or "coming soon" listings. Brokerage giant Compass favors quietly marketing homes first to its own agents and clients, sometimes for weeks, before going fully public. Zillow, which opposes that model, says it may refuse to carry homes that aren't broadly listed within a day of being shopped elsewhere. MRED backs Compass' approach; Zillow has responded with a lawsuit accusing MRED and Compass of colluding to cut off its feed and reduce transparency.

"Chicagoland home buyers and sellers this morning have far worse access to the housing market than they had yesterday, because their local MLS decided one megabrokerage's profits mattered more than their ability to achieve the American Dream," a Zillow rep said on Wednesday, per ABC 7. By midday Wednesday, Zillow showed about 2,000 homes for sale in Chicago, versus more than 8,600 on Realtor.com. "They don't know what they're not seeing," says local broker Josh Black.