Zillow "Wants to Punish the Agent" and Could "Sue Entire Brokerages", says Internal Document

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin has shared a confidential Zillow document outlining the company's approach to ensure that housing stock continued to appear on its portal after CCP rollbacks earlier this year.

The document, partially redacted and watermarked as highly confidential according to attorney/client privilege, was shared by Reffkin on LinkedIn over the weekend after it was inducted as evidence into Compass' lawsuit against Zillow brought earlier this year.

For context, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) rolled back its Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) in 2025, no longer requiring all property listings to be uploaded to an MLS within 24 hours of being marketed publicly.

The move kicked off a butterfly effect of new listing rules set out by the likes of Zillow and Redfin that have escalated into public feuds and lawsuits.

Dating back to December 2024 and named "Strategy Synthesis", the document outlines an updated strategy as Zillow prepared for (at the time) expected rollback of CCP, which would have a major knock-on effect for the company's ability to pull almost total access to monetisable stock nationwide to its portal.

The document summarises the likely knock-on effects of different levels of CCP legislation to consumers, brokerages and, by extension, Zillow. Several action plans and technical projects were shared, including delegations, deliverables, and contingencies surrounding rival businesses, including CoStar Group and Compass.

Contextualising the CCP landscape, selected quotes from Zillow include:

It is probable that the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) will go away. Without a NAR CCP rule it would be down to the MLSs to set standards. Large brokerages hold a lot of power, since MLSs are dependent on them for driving membership/dues, and we therefore expect brokerages to drive towards an erosion of MLSs' CCP rules.

Additionally, CoStar and Compass can be expected to continue to relentlessly pursue PLNs/Coming Soons, with potentially negative implications for Zillow without appropriate preparation and action.

Although MLSs should be incentivized to preserve CCP, we believe they will likely capitulate to the loudest (ie. largest) brokerages that make up their membership base, and/or neighbouring MLS competitive pressure and amend CCP to a more liberal version.

Large brokerages are short-term profit minded and will look for money, marketing and exposure to support their goals...They will push MLSs for a change in the CCP rule to accommodate this, and we believe they will successfully do so in many markets.

[In a post-CCP world] there are several factors that would hurt Zillow's position in the market. CoStar is willing to leverage and fund exclusives and off-MLS listings. They will aggressively market, spend a lot of cash, and hurt us directly. Compass is agitating and has a clear plan of attack [post-CCP]. NAR and MLSs are weary of litigation and do not want to enforce rules.

Where the document gets murky, and potentially damaging for Zillow, is its "Tactics and Whether to Lean Into Them" section, which outlines "aggressive" and "hardline" tactics such as destabilising individual agents and suing entire brokerages should they fail to list on Zillow publicly.

Examples of hardline tactics mentioned by Zillow include:

• Offer carrots (i.e. good data)...to brokers and MLSs that maintain CCP
• Suppress listings from uncooperative brokerages in the Zillow sort order
• Throttle data quality [where listings are still on Zillow but harder to find]
• Remove listings from uncooperative brokerages
• Remove ALL listings from uncooperative brokerages
• Suppress lead delivery from uncooperative brokerages
• Forbid uncooperative brokerages from buying other Zillow products
• Sue an agent or brokerage for violation of fiduciary duty.

Quotes include:

We have developed a long list of tactics...to help us reach our goals. We will not use all of these tactics. Teams will choose from these tactics as part of our toolbox.

We need agents to put all their listings on Zillow...We want to punish the agent for choosing to put their listings on alternate networks. We could forbid agents from purchasing Zillow products as long as there are listings that are privately listed.

We want brokerages to not enable Coming Soon from a technology standpoint. We don't want brokerages to have messaging or incentives around private listings or dual agency. We want agents to leave these offending brokerages if they do not change. [Our recommended plan is to] sue [these brokerages].

Do we ever want to remove listings that are not against our rules? What constitutes holding back listings? What is good vs bad behavior? Everything about the hardline plan assumes we can be successful at using a hammer to keep sellers and agents on our side.

Meanwhile, he document also outlined "CoStar's anticipated playbook" post-CCP rollback. Zillow predicts CoStar "will be motivated to adopt a more aggressive exclusive listing approach", perhaps by paying brokerages directly for exclusive listings.

[CoStar may] require Matterport photography services for exclusive listings...This ensures that CoStar owns the IP even after the listing goes back into the MLS.

Zillow went on to predict that CoStar will likely pursue lawsuits to create a moat between its IP (Matterport, photographs) and the rest of the industry. Ironically, this prediction came true months later when CoStar sued Zillow itself for gross copyright infringement, a lawsuit CoStar suggests could cost Zillow in excess of one billion dollars in damages.

The document also includes annotations in the form of comments from Zillow employees. One internal exchange sees an unnamed employee push back against the insinuation that "Agents are our primary customer", retorting, "No, our consumers are our primary customers and we can't ever forget that."

Commenting on LinkedIn when he shared the document, Compass boss Reffkin said:

"Zillow isn't protecting transparency, Zillow is protecting Zillow - and willing to hurt agents and sellers to protect their monopoly."

Zillow and Compass are engaged in an increasingly loud war of words, with jibes from both sides of the Compass/Zillow lawsuit dating back to July.