The antitrust lawsuit filed this summer between Compass and Zillow over the so-called “Zillow Ban” has attracted great interest across the real estate industry nationally. It has engendered particularly strong sentiment here in Beverly Hills, where privacy and security concerns often weigh in favor of private or “pocket” listings (See Letter to the Editor, July 18, 2025 issue of the Courier).
The Courier has asked attorney Pooja S. Nair for a recap of this high-profile case and what is at stake at a critical hearing this fall.
On June 23, 2025, Compass filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Zillow in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:25-cv-05201). The lawsuit challenges the Zillow Ban, which Zillow has framed as its new Listing Access Standards designed to provide maximum information to homebuyers.
According to the complaint (which cites Zillow’s own investor presentations), Zillow has 66% of the real estate audience share for the U.S. market, and 64% of the average daily app users. The Zillow Ban requires that any home that is publicly marketed be entered into a multiple listing service (MLS) and syndicated to Zillow within one business day. Failure to do so would result in the listing being blocked from appearing on Zillow and Trulia. The definition of a publicly marketed home is broad.
In the lawsuit, Compass describes its 3-phased marketing strategy, in which Compass provides a staging ground for listing. In phase 1, the listing is presented as a Compass Private Exclusive on Compass’ internal platform, only available to Compass agents. In phase 2, the listing moves to the “Coming Soon” phase, where it is posted to Compass’s public home search platform. In Phase 3, the listing is shared with the MLS database, and distributed to Zillow and other aggregators. The Zillow ban would make the first two phases of Compass’s marketing strategy obsolete in that any homes that were listed in Phase 1 and 2 would be banned from appearing on Zillow. Compass emphasizes that by eliminating those early phases, the Zillow Ban is stripping away at customer’s ability to test the waters in a more curated environment before launching into the wider marketplace.
Compass alleges that the Zillow Ban would make it hard “indeed nearly impossible for home sellers to sell their home outside of Zillow, in an effort to force all listings to be on Zillow where Zillow makes money selling leads off the homeowners’ listings.” It further alleges that the Zillow Ban makes it impossible for Zillow’s competitors to carry unique inventory and removes privacy benefits, because it forces homeowners to weigh the benefits of a private risking over the tremendous risk of never being able to list the property on Zillow.
Compass alleges that Zillow conspired with Redfin and eXp Realty to get those competitors to adopt and adhere to the Zillow ban. Compass further alleges in the Complaint that the Zillow Ban violates the antitrust laws by allowing Zillow to leverage its monopoly power to impose the Zillow ban on the market, and simultaneously entering into anticompetitive agreements with its competitors to do the same. Compass seeks a judicial declaration that Zillow’s conduct violates antitrust laws, and an injunction prohibiting Zillow from implementing and enforcing the Zillow ban, in addition to damages for Compass.
The case is before U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in the Southern District of New York. After Compass quickly moved for a preliminary injunction and filed a motion to expedite discovery on June 27, 2025. The court approved an order for limited expedited discovery. On July 17, 2025, Zillow filed its opposition to the preliminary injunction.
Zillow’s opposition argues that “the antitrust laws do not permit Compass to force Zillow to deal with Compass on its preferred terms or support hidden listings which harms customers and Zillow.” Essentially, Zillow argues that the motivation of Compass’ lawsuit is about protecting its own hidden funnel, to the detriment of consumers. Zillow’s framing positions itself as a democratizer of real estate data, compared to Compass as an outdated entity focused on exclusivity.
The lawsuit is currently in the expedited discovery stage, with the parties trading arrows, designating experts, and engaging in heated discovery practice. Compass’ evidentiary hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction will be on November 18, 2025, and the hearing will be extremely hard fought. Between now and then, both sides will likely marshal economic experts, industry insiders, and competing visions of how the real estate marketplace should function. The litigation is already attracting close attention from industry professionals, who see it as a referendum on how much control one platform should wield over how homes are bought and sold.
The long-term implications of the lawsuit could have a major effect on Beverly Hills and other luxury markets, which have historically used tools such as office exclusives, whisper campaigns, and staged rollouts to market ultra-high-end properties where privacy matters. Under the Zillow Ban, those phased strategies would be eliminated because any public marketing would trigger the one-day MLS rule, and prevent the seller from ever using Zillow, making utilizing the Compass phase 1 and phase 2 tools prohibitively risky. This is because if a home does not sell in those phases, the homeowner could risk never having it listed to the wider Zillow audience.
This case also fits into the larger wave of antitrust challenges against digital platforms. Courts and regulators are already wrestling with whether companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple are misusing their roles as gatekeepers to stifle competition. Compass is essentially arguing that Zillow falls within the same category as tech giants whose control over market access has been checked by the courts under the antitrust statutes.
Over the next three months before Compass’s preliminary injunction hearing, the stakes remain high. For Compass, a win could preserve its phased strategy and limit Zillow’s influence over how the industry markets homes. For Zillow, victory would reaffirm its authority to set industry standards. However it is resolved, the Zillow Ban antitrust suit is a test case for the future of how real estate will be marketed, and its outcome will be especially influential in luxury markets.
Pooja S. Nair is a Partner and Chair of the Food, Beverage, and Hospitality Department at Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP. She represents clients in real estate litigation and complex business disputes involving contracts, employment, intellectual property, and fraud. Her insights have appeared in Law360, Daily Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Before joining ECJ, she led the Food and Beverage practice at TroyGould and practiced white-collar defense at Foley & Lardner. She also serves on nonprofit boards and has been recognized as one of Los Angeles’s Top Litigators and Trial Attorneys and Most Influential Women Lawyers by the LA Business Journal.
