Zillow, eXp Realty team up against delayed marketing listings

Leo Pareja, the CEO of eXp Realty, has been a vocal supporter of the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), and now, as he put it, he and his firm are “putting their money where their mouth is.” 

On Thursday, eXp Realty announced that, as a brokerage, it was signing on to abide by Zillow’s standards for listing transparency. At the core of Zillow’s listing standards is the belief that “if a listing is marketed to any home shoppers, it should be marketed to all home shoppers.” 

According to the release, if a listing is publicly marketed to any buyer it must be put in an MLS and be able to be published on Zillow as well as other sites that receive internet data exchange (IDX) feeds. 

Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industry development officer, said the company is defining public marketing as anything from a yard sign to posting the listing on social media or the listing broker’s website. 

In essence this means that Zillow will not be displaying and eXp Realty will not be engaging in the NAR’s new Multiple Listing Options for Sellers policy which allows for delayed marketing exempt listings. Under this policy, sellers who sign a disclosure can withhold their listing from IDX feeds and syndication for a certain period of time within a time window determined by each MLS. During this “delayed marketing” period, the seller can direct their agent to market the property however they see fit, but it will not appear on any websites that use IDX feeds, including Zillow and Homes.com. 

“The idea here is that if a brokerage is holding listings back, they’re only sharing those listings and publicly marketing those listings to buyers who work with them, we think that that’s bad for sellers, it’s bad for buyers, and it’s bad for the market,” Samuelson said.

The two companies say they have made this decision to help preserve the current North American MLS system and encourage transparency in the marketplace.

“If we continue the way the industry appears to be headed and if more companies choose to stop cooperating, I think we are on a one-way path to living in a world where real estate looks a lot more like it does in Europe or the commercial market in the U.S. where all the data is siloed,” Pareja said. “In this system, sellers don’t get maximum exposure, leaving money on the table and buyers, especially vulnerable groups, are not getting full access to the most important tool for upward economic mobility.” 

Pareja said his viewpoint on this issue stems from leading a brokerage that operates in 23 markets outside of North America.

“If I am an agent in France and I want to show my customer all available properties, I would have to go to at least eight different sites to see just roughly 70% of all the available inventory,” Pareja said. “I’d then have to spend probably several hours phoning all of the boutique firms in the area to see what they had in their pipeline.”

Pareja fears that if one major industry player decides to stop cooperating by leaning heavily into exclusive listings more will follow suit causing the system to become “fractured” and “siloed.” 

Zillow’s new policy will go into effect on both Zillow and Trulia, which is owned by Zillow Group, in May 2025. If a listing is publicly marketed but unavailable on IDX feeds for any length of time it will not be able to be displayed on Zillow any time during the life of the listing. However, if the listing fails to sell and the seller signs a listing agreement with a new agent from a different brokerage, and they do not use a delayed marketing strategy, it can appear on Zillow. 

The two companies are hopeful that the policy along with eXp’s commitment to it will encourage other brokerages to commit to the same listing standards. 

“We believe that the vast majority of brokers in the marketplace share the belief that we have, that in the vast majority of cases sellers and buyers benefit from having listings on the MLS, and equally and widely marketed. So we are hoping the other voices will come to the table and support this policy because we think it is a the right thing for consumers,” Sameulson said. 

In line with eXp philosophy

At eXp, Pareja does not believe this announcement will come as much surprise to the industry. 

“I think this is in line with our philosophy of trying to make everything better for the US consumer — that is my North Star,” Pareja said. “And I think what is best for the consumer is where us as real estate professionals compete on service and value opposition, not on some scheme where we hoard inventory and steer customers for our own gain, and I think that’s what the other side is doing.” 

Pareja feels the CCP opponents are “misleading sellers, guiding them all to a one-size-fits-all structure purely for greed to double-end transactions and recruit more agents.” 

But while both companies are loud supporters of CCP, they also understand the need and desire of some sellers to do a private listing. 

“There are very valid safety and security reasons for someone to do a private listing, and I am fine with that,” Pareja said. “But to build a process where you think that this is good for the consumer on a 30-, 60-, 90-day basis to actively market it with a sign in the ground, but not have it openly available to the most number of possible buyers — I’m not ok with that.” 

Some have posited that a rapid rise in delayed marketing listings could spell doom for sites like Zillow that rely on IDX feeds. However, as NAR’s policy currently stands, delayed listing can be displayed on virtual office website (VOW) feeds, and as Zillow is registered as brokerage, it does have access to these feeds, which would still provide it with access to all available listing data, but it would be subject to strict guidelines. 

While Zillow and eXp have been staunch supporters of CCP, Compass and its CEO and founder Robert Reffkin have been vocal critics. Most recently Reffkin has been engaged in a battle with Washington State-based Northwest MLS (NWMLS). 

NWMLS is not associated with any Realtor associations, which has allowed it to establish its own Clear Cooperation Policy. Unlike NAR’s CCP, NWMLS does not allow agents to withhold listings from the MLS as privately marketed office exclusives. NAR’s policy allows listing agents to privately market an office exclusive listing to other agents within its firm or to agents and brokers at other firms provided that the listing is shared one-to-one and via mass email or text. 

As this battle has heated up Compass has backed a website, called Washington Homeowner Rights, which is soliciting NWMLS home sellers for a potential class action lawsuit. The site is looking for homesellers who have been “harmed” by NWMLS’ policies and who have experienced a price drop or significant days on market.

On Wednesday, Reffkin shared a quote from law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, which lists antitrust law as one of its specialties, on his social media accounts.

“Washington State Law requires a seller’s agent ‘to be loyal to the seller by taking no action that is adverse or detrimental to the seller’s interest in a transaction.’ By not allowing agents to market off the MLS when their client wants them to, Northwest MLS is in effect asking agents to break the law. State law supersedes MLS rules. NWMLS is forcing agents to choose between NWMLS’s rules and their clients’ wishes,” the statement, which is attributed to Crowell & Moring, reads. 

It remains to be seen how Compass, which, according to Reffkin, currently boasts over 22,000 listings which first appeared on its website, will respond to Zillow’s new policy.