Coach Darryl Davis writes that either the courts will decide the listing rules in the coming hours, or the most powerful players in the residential real estate industry will decide the rules through attrition.
The clock runs out in Chicago tonight at 11:59 p.m. Unless a federal judge intervenes, the Chicagoland area’s largest MLS could remove its listing feed from Zillow by morning. Either the courts will decide the rules for property distribution in the coming hours, or attrition will decide the rules for the two most powerful players in the residential real estate industry.
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This is the moment when conversations about explicit cooperation stop being about policy memos and start to become about Tuesday morning shows.
context
On Monday, May 18, Zillow filed for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, asking the court to prevent MRED from shutting down its Chicagoland listing feed while the underlying antitrust litigation proceeds. The original Sherman Act lawsuit was filed on May 12th. In layman’s terms, the allegation is that Compass and MRED worked together to blackmail Zillow’s Chicago feed unless Zillow agreed to display Compass’ private listings nationwide.
Zillow argued in its filing that it faces an “impossible decision” to waive what it calls its listing access standards or lose access to MRED listings, which Inman calls the nation’s third-largest real estate market. MRED has directed Zillow to restore visibility of all affected MRED listings or face a shutdown of its IDX and VOW feeds by tonight’s deadline.
Step back and the bigger picture will come into focus. Within weeks, Compass signed partnerships with four of the country’s largest MLSs: MRED, Realtracs, TheMLS/CLAW, and BrightMLS. These organizations cover the Mid-Atlantic, South, Chicagoland, and greater Los Angeles areas.
The partnership will feed Compass’ private exclusive content and upcoming properties into the MLS-managed network. Compass has also committed to subsidizing membership fees for up to 100,000 agents who participate in MRED, with similar subsidies offered in other MLS transactions.
While this map was being drawn, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin weighed in on LinkedIn. He wrote that while Compass is fighting to protect agents and home sellers with choice, Zillow is fighting for control over agents and home sellers. He also reinstated what he called Zillow’s internal strategy document, which he claimed proves Zillow was planning a lawsuit in advance to stop intermediaries from marketing outside the portal.
analysis
Two things can be true at the same time.
It’s true that Compass built the real thing. The company has been able to successfully recruit and hire talent, provide tools and brand support to agents, and gain significant leverage in the markets in which it operates. That should be acknowledged before being criticized.
It’s also true that the ongoing strategy of building private listing networks with the help of major MLSs is asking the rest of the industry to embrace a fragmented market where consumers see different listings depending on which brokerage represents the seller. No matter what you think about Zillow’s motives, that’s the structural question the court is required to consider.
When a market becomes fragmented, those with the least information advantage are the first to be squeezed. Intermediaries with sufficient resources rarely do that. It’s the boutique office, the part-time investor, and the consumer who doesn’t know what they don’t see.
Notice what neither side is talking about. Neither company is asking sales agents what the listing system should be.
A California Regional MLS survey released earlier this month found that 58.3 percent of active CRMLS subscribers support a clear cooperative policy, with the remaining 12.5 percent neutral and 17.24 percent not at all. Trade publications report that more than 70% of agents support or accept the policy.
That’s not a small number. This is a clear message from industry insiders to MLS, and neither the lawsuit nor the LinkedIn post was built around that signal.
When two well-funded corporations fight a public war, the question is not who will win; The question is what happens to your business if you both lose.
What agents should do
First, don’t repeat your campaign content. The numbers Zillow released this week or the language Refkin posted on LinkedIn are not neutral facts you just stumbled across. These are arguments constructed for courts, regulators, and competitors. Attach the source and only cite it if you can honestly do so.
Second, this week I will be auditing my listing inventory. If your listing is in the MRED area market and the feed is cut tonight, what will be the seller’s exposure tomorrow morning? Answer before the seller calls. If you participate in the Compass Partner Marketplace, get your marketing plan in writing so you know exactly which networks you will and will not be listed on.
Third, create a one-page sales letter that explains your office’s marketing process in plain language. Where the list is syndicated. Which portal handles it? Which networks are not connected to and why. Sellers won’t remember the names of the companies suing each other in Chicago. They will remember if the agent knew what was going on and was able to explain it without panicking.
Fourth, ask your broker about IDX and VOW backup vendors. Operationally, this is the kind of disruption that has crippled the office because no one had planned for the data spigot to go down on Tuesday night. There’s no such thing as a bad week for an agent who has a backup plan.
big picture
The “clear cooperation” question wasn’t really about rules. It was about whether the 2026 housing list is public or private property. A federal judge will answer some of those questions. The market will answer the rest.
For working agents, the answer is easier than the headlines make you think. You serve the seller. You serve the buyer. You are not servicing a portal, and you are not servicing a brokerage’s quarterly articles.
After the dust settles, the agents who work with sellers are the ones who told the truth about what they could and couldn’t do and did the job either way.
Look at the clock tonight. Let’s go back to work tomorrow.
