Realtracs and Zillow have extended their ceasefire, with the Nashville-based multiple listing service announcing on Monday that it will keep distributing listings to the portal.
“Realtracs remains actively engaged in discussions with Zillow, Homes.com, Redfin, and Realtor.com regarding our new licensing agreements,” Realtracs told subscribers in an email on Friday. “We continue to believe those discussions are productive and progressing.”
“We remain focused on reaching agreements that reflect the principles outlined below,” it continued. “Discussions remain active and productive, and we expect negotiations to continue beyond the June 8 timeline we had originally been working toward.”
The conflict started on April 29, when Realtracs updated its Grid IDX and VOW Rules, which addressed homesellers’ rights to have their property listing or property address not publicly displayed.
“A property listed by a seller who has elected not to have the property listing or the property address displayed on the Internet or other electronic forms of display or distribution shall not be included in public display,” the updated policy read. “All listings in the MLS Grid Data that match a consumer’s search criteria must be returned by [the] Vendor’s consumer search results, unless the seller, at their sole direction, has elected not to include their property listing or property address in public display.”
The update was in direct conflict with Zillow’s Listing Access Standards, which ban listings that aren’t “broadly accessible to the general public in a manner that provides open access.” The portal updated its LAS in March to remove mandates that listings be added to the MLS within 24 hours and that the listing appear on Zillow.
By May 27 — four days before the enforcement date — Realtracs said Zillow still wasn’t in compliance with the updated policy and would sever the listing feed by June 1.
However, the parties began negotiations, keeping the direct feed to Zillow alive until June 8, the date that the portal’s current license agreement was set to expire. As talks continue, the threat of rescinding the listing distribution to Zillow has been temporarily taken off the table.
“We remain hopeful that we can find a path forward that keeps Nashville listings visible to the millions of buyers who search Zillow every month,” a portal spokesperson told Inman in an emailed statement on Monday. “Our commitment to transparency in real estate is unwavering, and we believe it is possible to honor that commitment while continuing to serve the Nashville market together.”
Realtracs reassured its 18,000 members in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia that listing distribution currently remains “uninterrupted” and that if negotiations go awry, brokers will be able to send their listings to all four major portals through GRID’s Broker Only Export program.
“We remain focused on reaching modernized agreements that reflect the fact that the listing information that powers the real estate industry does not appear on its own — it comes from the expertise, effort, and investment of brokers and agents working on behalf of their clients,” Realtracs Chief Marketing Officer Katie St. Francis told Inman in an email on Monday. “The professionals who create that value should have a meaningful voice in how it is sourced and used in today’s world of artificial intelligence, data aggregation, lead generation platforms and large-scale consumer portals.”
