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Days after Zillow rocked the real estate industry with changes to its rules on private listings, Redfin followed suit with a ban on listings that don’t begin on a multiple listing service, CEO Glenn Kelman said in a statement Monday.
The two-paragraph announcement, which also calls on multiple listing services to create a “coming-soon” designation for listings that would conceal Days on Market and historical pricing data from consumers, is the latest twist to come as a result of an adjustment to NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy last month.
“Because we believe that all buyers should be able to see all listings, Redfin.com will not publish any listings that have been publicly marketed before being shared with all real estate websites via the MLS,” Kelman said in the statement. “To encourage home-sellers to market their listings via the MLS, Redfin is also asking MLSs to create a coming-soon designation for listings that precludes search sites from showing how long a home has been for sale and at what prices.”
Last month, NAR announced it would keep in place its Clear Cooperation Policy, which requires agents to put a listing onto an MLS within one business day of publicly marketing the property.
But it also created an exemption and new category of listings called “delayed marketing exempt listings,” which would allow sellers to have their listing agent delay putting a listing on the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) for a set period of time that would be determined by each multiple listing service.
In response, Zillow announced last week it would prohibit listings that are marketed privately for longer than a day. Listings that aren’t shared with an MLS within 24 hours of being marketed would be banned “for the life of the listing,” according to Zillow’s policy.
The change came in response to an ongoing push by major brokerages to create their own private listing networks.
Redfin said that it was fair to say its policy update, which it would implement after working through technical details over the coming months, was similar to Zillow’s and would apply to the life of the listing.
Other brokerages moved to align themselves in favor or against Zillow’s new policy. EXp and NextHome announced they supported the decision. Compass, @properties and others said they were opposed. Some opponents suggested Zillow was attempting to preserve its pipeline of leads that it generates through its platforms and sells to agents.
Kelman said Redfin, which is set to be acquired by Rocket Companies, would advocate MLSs to create a new designation indicating a home is coming soon to the market.
“Other brokers have supported the idea of coming-soon listings, but with access limited to agents, and potentially only to their own agents,” Kelman said in a continuation of his statement. “This violates the principle established in the last great real-estate anti-trust battle, settled in 2008, that all brokerage customers should be able to see all MLS listings, online or via an agent. And that principle exists for a reason: once brokers give our clients control over how their listing appears online, every client will want that listing to appear everywhere.”
Homes.com so far has sought to distinguish itself from Zillow and Redfin’s policies, with CoStar CEO Andy Florance saying in a post over the weekend that Zillow’s policy update was “incredible move of audacity and a pure power play of epic proportion.”
“Rest assured, if Zillow does block your listing, it will still be seen on Homes.com and the other sites,” Florance wrote.
