Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z, ZG) and its ShowingTime subsidiary have filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) and Wisconsin’s Metro Multiple Listing Service (Metro MLS), claiming they are engaging in anticompetitive practices designed to prevent the use of ShowingTime in favor of their own tour appointment platform.
Errol Samuelson, Zillow Group’s chief industry development officer, announced the lawsuit in a corporate blog posting.
“Recently, several MLSs formed a consortium called MLS Aligned and launched their own showing tool called Aligned Showings,” wrote Samuelson, who noted ARMLS and Metro MLS “plan to disable their integrations with ShowingTime — impacting the businesses of tens of thousands of agents in order to put the MLS-owned tool at an unfair advantage.”
Samuelson claimed that “ShowingTime made numerous attempts to convince these two MLSs to keep the seamless ShowingTime integration active as an additional option for their agent members, as other MLSs in the consortium have done.” He noted the two MLSs declined ShowingTime’s entreaties and are “giving Aligned Showings an effective monopoly in their regions. As a last resort, we filed a legal complaint because we believe the actions by these two MLSs are anticompetitive and disadvantage agents — and consumers — in these markets.”
The other members of the MLS Aligned network — RMLS in Oregon, Northern Nevada Regional MLS, UtahRealEstate.com, MLSListings in Northern California and BeachesMLS in Florida — are not part of Zillow’s lawsuit.
Neither ARMLS, which removed ShowingTime as a subscriber benefit on Dec. 27, nor Metro MLS have publicly commented on the lawsuit.
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Why should Zillow get all the advantages that agents must PAY FOR??? I just paid REQUIRED yearly dues for a local, state, and national membership PLUS quite a large fee to belong to our MLS! What other occupation has to belong to FOUR organizations EVERY YEAR just to earn a living? Zillow enjoys all the things we have to PAY for just so they can take business AWAY from agents. You want to talk about an unfair advantage?!
You are absolutely correct. Zillow is attempting to take over the real estate market. They do not belong to the Associations or pay for any of the fees we are required to pay. Maybe we all need to remove Zillow access to our listings through ListHub.. Then it would not be an issue. Realtors do all the hard work then hand it over to Zillow. Zillow is not on our side.
Showing time is for lazy, unprepared agents and their unsuspecting buyers. I quit allowing these automated showing services for many reasons, late arrivals, no shows , lookee loos etc. Why give zillow any more access?
My question is does Zillow monetize Shoeing Time and how? I never add my client’s info to showing time so I don’t see how they can infringe on my business but they’re not doing this for their health
I think the answer is data. They know how many showings a home gets, for starters. Next, they know when it is active, when it is pending, how many showings at that price, sqft, etc, it took to pend, then close. I think it is acceptable to allow them in if the MLSs want them in. I do not think they have a right to be in there because agents can still use showing time and just put a link, etc, in there saying to go here, blah blah blah. The feature is a bonus and a commodity from a real estate agent’s standpoint. I will stand in the peanut gallery to see how this plays out, but I am betting Zillow loses this one in court. This is like Pepsi suing Disney because Disney is 99% all Coke, and they feel the same “reasons” Zillow feels about this. Where is this lawsuit? The MLSs have a right to choose who they partner with. But I am just a layman who only has a worthless opinion here.
I don’t understand how Zillow can sue independent MLS systems and bullying them that they have to use Zillow system only this is just another predatory practice by Zillow the courts need to put a hammer down on Zillow for these bullying practices that they’ve been allowed to continue with over the years
This should be totally up the the local and regional MLS associations. What Zillow is doing is anti-competitive. This is a free market. MLS’s should be able to choose what systems they want to use.
I think Z could be monetizing the data. If agents set it up with client info so that they can be contacted about showings, they have everything they need. Cell phones, emails, everything to sell that data to marketing groups. I stopped entering any client data into the showing systems years ago when I had clients getting movers calling them on their private cell phone numbers and spamming them on internal company private emails. Someone is selling the data for sure. In Chicago, The MLS was selling data for profit in the past.