Realtracs and Zillow have reached a new licensing agreement that will keep the multiple listing service’s direct feed flowing to the portal, ending months of negotiations over listing-display rules, broker-created data and the use of real estate content in artificial intelligence, the Nashville-based MLS announced Wednesday.
The agreement replaces a series of temporary extensions that kept Realtracs listings on Zillow while the two companies negotiated this summer. It also preserves access to Zillow-owned products including ShowingTime, Follow Up Boss and Dotloop for Realtracs brokers and agents.
In a blog post on the agreement, Realtracs said the new deal places clearer limits on how Zillow can use listing data, including guardrails covering artificial intelligence, large language models, market analytics and consumer-facing products. Brokers and agents will also receive more detailed reporting about how their listings are viewed and engaged with on Zillow.
The MLS has argued throughout the negotiations that listing information is created through the work and investment of brokers and agents and that those professionals should have a greater say in how technology companies use and monetize that content.
But Zillow said it did not change the Listing Access Standards that prompted Realtracs to threaten to terminate the feed this spring. In a blog post published Wednesday, the home search leader said the standards were not modified under the agreement and remain fully in effect in the Nashville region.
Zillow said those standards allow it to suppress listings that were initially marketed to a limited audience before becoming broadly available to consumers, even when the listings comply with an MLS’s own rules.
The agreement instead gives Realtracs greater visibility when Zillow is preparing to take enforcement action against one of its subscribers. Zillow will notify Realtracs at the same time it alerts an agent that the agent has reached the threshold for listing suppression.
Realtracs said the notice will allow it to work directly with the affected brokerage or agent to promote what it called “healthy cooperation.”
The outcome represents a compromise: Realtracs secured uninterrupted distribution, stronger protections for broker-created data and greater visibility into Zillow’s enforcement, while Zillow retained the listing standards at the center of the dispute.
Months of negotiations
The agreement resolves a dispute that began in late April, when Realtracs updated the listing-display rules governing companies that receive data through MLS Grid. The new policy required technology vendors to return all listings matching a consumer’s search criteria unless the seller had specifically directed that the listing or property address not be displayed publicly.
That update put Realtracs’ rules in direct conflict with Zillow’s Listing Access Standards, which allow the portal to block listings that were initially marketed to a limited audience before becoming broadly available.
The conflict became public in late May, when Realtracs warned that it would shut off Zillow’s direct listing feed beginning June 1. The MLS said Zillow was the only major platform that had not complied with the updated policy and that dozens of Realtracs listings had already been banned. At the time, Realtracs said Zillow would need to stop blocking listings that complied with the MLS’s rules if it wanted to keep receiving the direct feed.
Zillow declined to change its standards, arguing that they promote a transparent and broadly accessible marketplace. The company also accused Compass CEO Robert Reffkin of leading a coordinated effort to pressure MLSs into pulling their feeds from Zillow.
Rather than terminate the feed on June 1, Realtracs granted a series of extensions while the two sides negotiated. The MLS ultimately allowed talks to continue beyond the June 8 expiration of their previous licensing agreement.
The threatened cutoff carried potentially significant consequences for Zillow. When Midwest Real Estate Data temporarily severed its feed in May, Zillow quickly lost more than half of the listings available through its Chicago-area search results before a federal judge ordered the feed restored while Zillow’s lawsuit against MRED and Compass proceeded.
Realtracs had also told members that brokers could continue sending listings to Zillow and other major portals through MLS Grid’s Broker Only Export program if the MLS-level feed went dark. But the organization said it preferred to reach updated agreements governing how listing information is licensed, displayed and used.
Those talks were not limited to Zillow. Realtracs has also been negotiating new licensing agreements with Realtor.com, Homes.com and Redfin. Wednesday’s agreement could provide a template for those negotiations. Realtracs said it plans to apply consistent standards through its new Data Licensing Platform as additional technology companies renew their agreements.
A broader fight over listings
The negotiations unfolded amid a wider industry battle over whether portals should be allowed to exclude listings that comply with an MLS’s own marketing rules.
Compass has been at the center of that fight through its promotion of a three-phase marketing strategy that allows sellers to begin with a brokerage-only Private Exclusive, move to a publicly viewable Coming Soon listing and then enter the MLS.
Zillow had long maintained that listings marketed to a limited audience before becoming broadly available undermine transparency and equal access for consumers. Compass has pushed back, claiming that Zillow is overriding sellers’ marketing choices and using its market power to punish brokerages that compete with the portal for consumers and listing inventory.
That disagreement has increasingly drawn MLSs into the conflict.
MRED and Bright MLS have adopted policies intended to prevent portals and other listing recipients from withholding properties that comply with MLS rules. Those moves placed the organizations more directly at odds with Zillow and strengthened Compass’ campaign against the portal’s Listing Access Standards.
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin pointed to Nashville and several other major markets during the company’s earnings call Tuesday as evidence that MLSs are moving toward rules that give sellers and agents more flexibility over how homes are initially marketed.
“They have begun to compete, including by offering more flexible rules that let homesellers and their agents determine where and how to market their own properties,” Reffkin said. “MLSs that are expanding recognize that if they want to get agents in new markets to sign up to their MLS, they can’t expand with more restrictive rules and fines.”
Realtracs is also part of a group of large MLSs that expanded nationally this spring and reached data-sharing arrangements with Compass, alongside MRED, Bright MLS and TheMLS/CLAW. Together, the organizations cover major markets in Chicagoland, the South, the Mid-Atlantic and greater Los Angeles.
Compass agreed to make its nationwide listing data available to subscribers of the participating MLSs and, in some markets, subsidize membership costs for its agents. The arrangements have increased competition among MLSs while giving Compass additional allies in its push for more flexible listing-marketing policies.
The Realtracs agreement appears to represent a more cooperative outcome than the confrontation playing out in Chicago. Rather than cutting off Zillow’s feed or forcing the portal to abandon its standards, the deal creates a notification process and gives Realtracs a more direct role when one of its brokers or agents faces suppression.
Zillow characterized the agreement as evidence that the two organizations share a commitment to broad listing access, while emphasizing that its standards remain unchanged.
