Zillow loses thousands of listings in fight over “hidden” homes

Key points

• On Wednesday, Zillow abruptly lost access to thousands of property listings in the Chicago area after filing a lawsuit accusing a private listing network owner of colluding with the nation’s largest brokerage to harm consumers by hiding homes.
• According to the Chicago Sun-Times, hopeful Chicagoland home buyers browsing Zillow and Trulia suddenly saw significantly fewer listings.
• On Zillow, a nearly 5,000-home market dropped to about 1,700. Thorough home buyers diligently checking every possible resource can still turn to other platforms, like Redfin and Realtor.com, which currently host between 5,000 and 8,000 listings, the Sun-Times noted.
• But in an antitrust lawsuit filed last week, Zillow claimed that everybody buying or selling a home will be harmed if the alleged collusion goes unchecked.
• Specifically, Zillow alleged that Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) and Compass, two “powerful players in the real estate industry,” have conspired to create “barriers to information that harm...