Is Zillow’s Home Search Monopoly About to Crumble?

Did you hear the news? If you own a home, something unexpected just happened that could affect your ability to sell it, and the price a buyer pays you.

 

What happened? The unthinkable. One of America’s largest real estate firms, publicly traded, just sued Zillow for multiple antitrust violations. It’s a legal missile that could blow away Zillow’s dominance in website home search.

 

 

What’s the story? For decades, homeowners had choices in how to market their homes. Want to test buyer interest and pricing before accumulating days on the market online? You could do that. Prefer not to have neighbors know you’re selling right away? That was your right.

 

Then Zillow dropped a bombshell on the industry. In April it mandated to every listing agent in America that a home marketed anywhere else for more than 24 hours before being posted to Zillow will be permanently banned from their platform forever. Yes, permanently and forever.

 

Zillow essentially told every homeowner in America: Market your home our way, on our platform, on our timeline, or we’ll make sure the millions of buyers who use our site every month never see your property.

 

 

Why might you not want your home on Zillow, before you at least try other media? When your home is marketed on Zillow, it’s not just getting exposure to buyers, it’s being used as bait to generate profits for Zillow… at your expense.

 

Why at your expense? When buyers find your home on Zillow and click “Contact Agent,” Zillow doesn’t connect them with your listing agent, the person buyers expect to talk with, the person who knows about your property. Instead, Zillow connects your potential buyers with an agent who pays Zillow for leads.

 

Think about how absurd this is. You’re trying to sell your home. A buyer is interested. But instead of connecting them with your agent, Zillow inserts a middleman agent who knows nothing about your property and has never even seen it. This agent’s primary qualification? They paid Zillow for your buyer. And that agent has a financial incentive, perhaps even a fiduciary obligation, to try to switch “your” buyer to “their” personal listings.

 

Zillow also displays your time on the market, price adjustments, and even “offer guides” suggesting buyers offer you less than your quoted price. Why? Buyers like these features. And Zillow profits by attracting buyers it sells to agents, using your home as bait.

 

 

And that’s why Zillow instituted the 24-hour “use us or lose us” rule. While its website attracts a lot of buyer traffic (estimated at 227 million a month), it can be an unfriendly, sale-price-diminishing place for sellers.

 

So Compass, a large, publicly traded real estate firm, stepped up and filed a 67-page federal lawsuit in New York, alleging that Zillow has violated federal antitrust laws by using “anticompetitive tactics” to maintain an illegal monopoly over online home listings.

 

The lawsuit centers on Compass’s “Private Exclusives” program, which gives sellers exactly what Zillow’s trying to eliminate: choice. Through Private Exclusives, sellers can test market interest, maintain privacy, and control how their home is marketed without immediately surrendering control to Zillow’s lead-generation machine.

 

 

It’s a smart program, similar to my 72SOLD 4-stage marketing program. Compass calls theirs a 3-phase program. Both programs begin with aggressive off-MLS, off-Zillow marketing to help sellers assess demand, test their price, and possibly sell to a buyer who pays a premium price to head off official public exposure.

 

Sale price studies on both the Compass and 72SOLD marketing programs show they result in higher offers from buyers and higher average sale prices for sellers. A 2025 independent study on the last 11,600 72SOLD program home sales showed a median sale price 5.8% higher than other MLS sales. Zillow knows that. Zillow hates that.

 

 

Compass is using the same legal framework that broke up Standard Oil, AT&T, and other monopolies that got too powerful for America’s good.

 

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 contains two provisions that could devastate Zillow:

 

The Conspiracy Charge: Compass alleges that Zillow coordinated with other platforms like Redfin to eliminate alternatives to their lead-generation model. When companies work together to stifle competition, that’s illegal under federal law.

 

The Monopolization Charge: Using market dominance to eliminate competitors rather than compete fairly is textbook illegal monopolization. Zillow’s 24-hour rule is exactly the kind of “exclusionary conduct” that antitrust law was designed to prevent.

 

The Evidence is Compelling: Zillow’s policy specifically targets innovative services that give consumers more choices. That’s not competition; it’s monopolistic suppression of alternatives.

 

 

Having been intrigued with antitrust litigation for 50 years, I believe that Compass has assembled a strong case. More importantly, it has something that Zillow fears even more than a large financial judgment: moral high ground.

 

If this case goes before a jury of ordinary homeowners, who do you think they’ll side with? The brokerage fighting for seller choice and market competition, or the website that uses homes as bait to attract buyers it sells to agents.

 

I predict Zillow will settle this case before it goes to trial, paying between $85-$140 million and agreeing to eliminate its 24-hour rule. They’ll do this not just to avoid a large judgment, but to prevent months of damaging testimony about how their business model actually works.

 

The Compass vs. Zillow lawsuit started as a dispute over a 24-hour rule, but it’s going to end as the catalyst that benefits home sellers nationwide. Zillow will have to compete for sellers, improving its website to earn your business.

 

Pay attention to this case. The way you buy and sell homes in the future will be impacted by it.