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Compass CEO Robert Reffkin is ending the week the same way he began it: lambasting Zillow for its “hypocrisy” regarding off-market listings.
Robert Reffkin
“Between 2018-2021, Zillow’s iBuying business bought more than 20,000 homes, convincing homeowners to sell directly to them without using the [multiple listing service],” the Instagram post read. “Now, Zillow research claims homeowners lose money if they don’t use the MLS.”
“When Zillow was making money buying homes off the MLS, it supported off-MLS sales,” he added. “Now that it can’t profit from leads on those off-MLS listings, they say it’s bad for homeowners to list off the MLS. Either Zillow’s ‘research’ that homes sell for less off the MLS is flawed, or they spent 3.5 years taking advantage of homesellers. Only one can be true.”
The post garnered 1,775 likes and 106 comments from brokers, 105 of whom supported Reffkin’s view on Zillow’s business model.
“So glad you are pushing against Zillow! They can’t survive without our inventory,” read one comment.
“Zillow took advantage of sellers and lost money. Now they’re back to trying to protect their revenue via control of others’ access to listings,” read another comment. “Sounds about right for corporate greed.”
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A sole commenter backed Zillow and its now-defunct Zillow Offers segment, saying it’s unfair to compare iBuying to private listing networks. All homebuyers, they said, had access to Zillow Offers listings after Zillow purchased the home, remodeled and repaired it, and placed it back on the open market. Meanwhile, listings circulated within private listing networks usually never make it to the wider public, unless the homeseller changes their mind.
“Everyone has access to Zillow as opposed to Compass, which has a database only for their agents and homebuyers so they can double-end deals,” the comment read. “[That] makes shareholders happy while disenfranchising agents and customers that don’t want to work for Compass.”
A company spokesperson pushed back on that response, saying Compass doesn’t agree with those saying the company “is just doing this to double-end more deals.”
“In the world of signed buyer representation agreements, Compass is going to make the exact same amount of money if a buyer buys a private exclusive or a listing from a different brokerage,” they said. “The agreement says they have six to nine months. It doesn’t matter. It seems like ‘organized real estate’ is using the same arguments for control that worked before the settlement required buyer rep agreements last Aug. 17 and didn’t realize that the world changed to a point where the argument no longer makes sense.”
Reffkin’s Instagram post on Friday, June 13.
Reffkin’s Instagram post follows a post on LinkedIn from Monday, where the CEO attacked Zillow’s 2014 Coming Soon search function, which enabled homebuyers to view “coming soon” listings and contact a Zillow Premier Agent for more information on that listing.
Reffkin said Zillow is planning to ban “coming soon” listings — which Zillow has told Inman is not true — and said the move is hypocritical.
“Zillow now claims pre-marketed ‘Coming Soon’ listings harm consumers in an effort to ban them; however, when Zillow launched their ‘Coming Soon’ listings, they outlined many benefits to agents and consumers in their press release, stating: ‘Similar to a Coming Soon sign in the yard of the physical property, displaying a home as Coming Soon on Zillow helps agents and their sellers gauge buyer interest and test the list price against current market conditions, and can help reduce the total time a home is on the market. Knowledge about homes that will soon be on the market gives buyers a leg up,” the post read.
“Clearly it’s ok to ‘gauge buyer interest,’ ‘test the list price,’ ‘help reduce the total time a home is on the market’ and ‘give buyers a leg up’ if it’s on the Zillow platform but now that agents are doing it off the Zillow platform, Zillow wants to stop it,” it added. “Zillow isn’t protecting the consumer, Zillow is protecting the dominance of their platform.”
The LinkedIn post garnered a similar reaction to Reffkin’s Instagram post, with 25 commenters praising the CEO’s push against Zillow ahead of the portal’s listing ban, which will impact thousands of Compass homesellers and listing agents using the brokerage’s three-phase marketing strategy, which involves launching listings as private exclusives, then “coming soon” properties and, ultimately, on public listing portals.
“Such a revealing contrast, when it served them, Zillow praised ‘Coming Soon’ listings as innovative,” a commenter said. “Now that agents use it independently, it’s suddenly harmful? This isn’t about consumer protection, it’s about platform control.”
Reffkin’s Instagram post on Monday, June 9.
Reffkin’s posts come as Zillow finishes the second week of sending non-compliance notices for listings that aren’t added to the multiple listing service (MLS) within 24 hours of being publicly marketed.
Zillow Group has taken a “three-strikes” approach in which brokers will receive warnings for their first two non-compliant listings before having their third non-compliant listing banned from Zillow, Trulia and StreetEasy on June 30.
The ban doesn’t impact “coming soon,” office exclusives or Delayed Marketing Exempt Listings (DMEL) as long as brokers are adhering to NAR’s guidance for each listing status, Inman’s ban FAQ explained. For sale by owner (FSBO) listings and rental listings won’t be impacted by the ban. New construction listings sold by the builder are also exempt, unless they are listed with a broker under an exclusive listing agreement, in which case, they’ll also be held to the new standards.
Zillow declined to comment for this article.
