Zillow Executive Says "Consumers and Agents Being Misled" About Private Listings

A Zillow executive has weighed into the argument currently surrounding the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) that demands listing brokers upload listings to the MLS within one business day of marketing the property.

Errol Samuelson, Zillow Group's chief industry development officer, says Zillow is a staunch defender of CCP as a cornerstone of transparent listings in the United States.

Samuelson told Real Estate News:

"I don't see the benefit of hiding inventory, ever. We think the focus needs to be on the end goal, which is transparency around listings, because right now, consumers and agents are being misled. They're being harmed.

"We think that sellers need to think very carefully before their agent or their brokerage convinces them to hold their listing off MLS. It's bad for buyers, because we have a housing inventory and affordability crisis right now, and so anytime you hide inventory in a private network that's only available to certain agents and their customers, that reduces inventory and drives the prices up and affordability down.

"There's the specter of having five or six or seven private databases in a marketplace. And that's not only a nightmare for buyers who now aren't just seeing the listings in one private network, but it's really bad for agents. And so the dynamic is very dangerous when you get one or two big brokers who feel that this is giving them a competitive advantage."

Zillow is understandably a major proponent of CCP—its business is built entirely on the premise that every property listing will be syndicated from the MLS to Zillow's search portal on a national scale.

Samuelson's boss, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman, is such a proponent of CCP that he penned an article in his own name on Real Estate News this month, saying "[Zillow is] staunchly against anything that prevents open, fair and transparent access to listings, and believe listings should be entered into the MLS within one day of public marketing."

Wacksman also included findings from Zillow research published in January. Interestingly, Zillow found that 63% of survey respondents who sold a home within the past five years said their agent recommended listing on a private listing network—which theoretically goes against what Zillow stands for.

Most homes for sale are listed on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a database shared by the real estate industry wherein all agents can see each other's listings.

But CCP, proposed in 2019 and enacted in 2020, is now under major scrutiny. The NAR is considering repealing the rule entirely, leaving the door open for a seismic change in how reliant the United States real estate marketplace is on the MLS, if at all.

Under new rules, brokerages would no longer be obliged to publish their listings on the MLS. This has led to a hugely divisive debate across the United States, with Compass CEO Robert Reffkin branding CCP "forced cooperation", "reckless" and "anti-competitive."