Zillow’s Fight with MRED, Compass Over Listings Heads to Court

The Zillow-MRED saga has arrived in court.

The home search giant is slated to face MLS operator Midwest Real Estate Data and Compass International Holdings — the parent company of the residential brokerage — as part of its bid to protect its listing feed, over a two-day hearing in the Northern District of Illinois.

The proceedings come after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on May 21 against MRED, providing temporary relief for Zillow, which had briefly lost listing data from the Chicago-area MLS.

Zillow is seeking a preliminary injunction to keep the listing feed access. The proceedings will not evaluate its ongoing federal antitrust lawsuit against MRED and Compass.

Zillow has accused MRED and Compass of colluding to force it to display Compass’ private listings on its platform nationwide, or else risk losing access to all listing data. This showdown emerges from a long-culminating discord over private listings that has snowballed to include data giant CoStar, which recently asked a federal court to deny Zillow’s preliminary injunction.

How did it get this far?

The clash can be traced back to Zillow’s Listing Access Standards policy.

The policy, which went live in April 2025, prohibited agents from publicly marketing listings on channels outside Zillow. It was seen as a response to Compass’ three-phased marketing plan, which begins with some listings beginning as private exclusives before going to the public market — a strategy also used by MRED’s Private Listing Network.

In October, MRED changed its rules to prohibit Zillow from penalizing listings that start out on private channels like its Private Listing Network — allowing agents to share properties to all MLS subscribers without putting them on public portals like Zillow.

Compass initially challenged Zillow’s policy, but dropped its lawsuit in March 2026. The animosity intensified in April, when MRED announced that it would nationalize access to the regional MLS, including its Private Listing Network.

The move was backed by Compass, which offered to syndicate its national inventory to MRED, including sending off-market listings to the private network.

What’s happened in the legal fight so far?

On May 12, Zillow filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against MRED and Compass, alleging the companies conspired to harm Zillow and force it into displaying Compass’s private listings.

MRED followed through on its threat the following week and shut off Zillow’s data feed, leaving Zillow with less than half the listings in the Chicago-area of competitors like Redfin and Realtor.com.

Two days later, Judge John Tharp issued a temporary restraining order requiring MRED to restore the feed, maintaining Zillow’s access until the parties meet again in court in July.

In the leadup to the hearing, data giant CoStar has threw its hat in the ring, asking the federal court to deny Zillow’s motion for a preliminary injunction in the listing platform’s antitrust lawsuit.

CoStar, which operates Zillow competitor Homes.com, claimed in its motion that granting the preliminary injunction would protect its access to listings “while allowing Zillow to operate its own exclusive pre-MLS listings, withholding them from Homes.com and other competing portals to the detriment of consumers and competition itself.”

What now?

The parties made their last moves before the hearing as recently as Monday, with MRED filing a last-minute motion to compel arbitration instead of court proceedings.

Zillow, in a June 29 blog post, said it will use its day in court to demonstrate MRED and Compass’s conspiracy.

“We will present evidence that MRED and Compass did it not to protect consumers or set neutral MLS policy, but to advance Compass’ private listing business at the expense of consumers and other MRED member brokers,” the post said.

Zillow maintains that even if it loses the injunction, it will continue its fight against MRED and Compass and will keep its Listing Access Standards.

Expected witnesses at the hearing on Zillow’s side include its chief industry development officer, Errol Samuelson and CFO Jeremy Hofmann, and antitrust expert Lawrence Wu, Inman reported, facing off with testimony by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin, MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen, and MRED’s CTO Chris Haran.