Yesterday, Zillow released a statement….an excerpt:
Our standards are straightforward: If a listing is marketed directly to consumers without being listed on the MLS and made widely available where buyers search for homes, it will not be published on Zillow. These new standards will go into effect on Zillow and Trulia in May 2025.
Now we have NAR, the MLS, and Zillow putting restrictions on how sellers and their agents can market their homes. We’ll see what the DOJ says about it!
Our fearless leader, Robert Reffkin, says we’re not changing anything.
Zillow teamed up with eXp to make the announcement, and included a link to the eXp website, where you can find their eXp Exclusives. Either eXp has failed to alter/delete their Exclusives or Zillow is leaving room for the permitted intraoffice sales. Compass calls ours the Private Exclusives and I can set up a collection of them for a client to peruse.
If Zillow is fine with Private Exclusives – and how would they know about them – then I don’t mind being in full compliance. It eliminates the Coming Soon option which is a waste of time anyway.
If Zillow finagles a way to find out about our Private Exclusives and bans them too, then the war is on. Hopefully it will be a quick, one shot war and we can get on with the future of selling homes.
I think Compass would quit the NAR, MLS systems, and Zillow, and we make a deal with Homes.com to send them our listings exclusively. We will want to partner with a national search portal to appease our sellers and agents who want more coverage than what’s available with compass.com. Homes.com would love the boost!
Our Private Exclusives are registered with the MLS. If they rat us out and give our Private Exclusives to Zillow, then quitting all of them would be in order.
P.S. I will be in a small-group meeting with Robert Reffkin on Wednesday – stay tuned!
Zillow wants to become TicketMaster.
Great observation!
It’s not enough to be #1, they want to boss others around too. Just like Ticketmaster, which has ruined the access to Padres tickets.
San Diego County had the highest inflation rate in the nation in March.
Inflation was 3.8%, the same rate as January, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. San Diego tied with New York for highest rate of a metro area in the U.S., followed by Chicago at 3.7% and Los Angeles at 3%.
San Diego metro, which includes all of San Diego County, saw prices rise at a quicker rate than the nation, which averaged 2.4%. The main factors raising San Diego’s rate were gasoline, fruit and vegetables and alcoholic beverages.
San Diego’s rate is still much lower than it has been in recent years. It hit a high of 8.2% in 2022 and has cooled along with much of the nation. Still, its prices are rising higher than most of the U.S., and the latest data will do little to reduce America’s Finest City’s reputation as an expensive place to live.
“People like the lifestyle, like the environment, so they want to come here,” said Alan Gin, economist at the University of San Diego. “But that comes with a price.”
The effect of on-and-off tariffs from the Trump administration have largely yet to show up in inflation reports, despite many economists warning they would lift prices. President Donald Trump called for tariffs on more than 100 nations last week, only to pause them on 75 countries on Wednesday.
San Diego County is Mexico adjacent. Their economy leaks into your economy far more than traditional models may suggest.
That and TicketMaster turning $22 tickets into $33 tickets with a $15 processing fee.
All of this isn’t good for the only person that matters: the consumer. Compass isn’t going this route to protect sellers they are trying to increase their dual agency transactions which will lead to more profits for a publicly traded company. In addition to hoarding inventory which numerous studies say will not increase the selling price for a seller, Compass is trying to force agents to join their brokerage or be left out of a portion of the inventory. Both Zillow and Compass are combatants not in buyers and sellers best interests but for profit. That’s a terrible direction for the consumer and the real estate industry.
You and everyone keep saying that but you don’t work at Compass.
I’m telling you that there isn’t a mention of round-tripping.
Because our reputation is being crushed, I wish there was a concerted effort among Compass management and agents to conduct a vibrant off-market selling environment. Everyone thinks that what’s going on, so we might as well do it. But we’re not.
I’m guessing that the amount of Compass off-market sales haven’t increased much if at all in the last year.
There have been 478 NSDCC sales this year.
There are 39 that show zero days-on-market (the typical indicator of an off-market sale). Agents are proud of them and can’t wait to input them into the MLS so everyone can see.
Of the 39, nine were listed by Compass. Seven of those were sold to Compass buyer-agents, and let’s assume those are a result of a concerted effort.
Seven out of 478 sales isn’t moving the needle. It’s probably a similar pace to the previous year.