Zillow & Redfin: Rental Listings Antitrust Suit?

Zillow and Redfin face a lawsuit over their rental listings partnership, accused of anticompetitive practices and raising prices for property managers and renters. FTC also filed claim.

” Rent is totally expensive today, and this offer is going to make things even worse,” Tong said. “This unreasonable and anticompetitive agreement in between listing giants Zillow and Redfin will certainly jack up prices for residential property managers, that will pass those prices on occupants.”

Redfin’s Defense

What Redfin needed to state: “Redfin highly disagrees with the accusations and is positive we will certainly be vindicated by a law court,” the company said in a statement sent to Real Estate News. “Our collaboration with Zillow has actually provided Redfin.com site visitors accessibility to more rental listings and our marketing clients access to more occupants. By the end of 2024, it was clear that the existing variety of Redfin marketing customers could not justify the price of preserving our rentals sales pressure. Partnering with Zillow reduced those expenses and enabled us to spend more in rental-search technologies on Redfin.com, directly benefiting apartment or condo hunters.”

The Lawsuit’s Claims

What the new suit states: The 36-page filing mirrors the FTC claim, declaring that Zillow “has no interest in continuing to compete with Redfin” and asserting that the business’ collaboration comprises “an illegal arrangement to eliminate competitors from this currently highly focused market.”

Zillow’s Perspective

What Zillow needed to claim: “Our listing submission with Redfin tenants both advantages and home supervisors and has increased renters’ access to multifamily listings across multiple systems,” a Zillow speaker claimed in a statement sent out to Realty Information. “It is pro-competitive and pro-consumer by attaching property managers to much more high-intent occupants so they can fill their vacancies and even more tenants can obtain home. We continue to be confident in this collaboration and the enhanced value it has actually delivered and will certainly continue to provide to customers.”

Just how we got below: On Feb. 11, Zillow and Redfin said they would certainly got to a deal to make Zillow the unique multifamily rental listings provider for Redfin’s family of internet sites, that include Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com. A news release at the time claimed the collaboration would certainly “give tenants accessibility to a bigger pool of offered houses” and enable property owners to “get to an also broader audience of renters across multiple systems.”

Following an investigation into the offer, the FTC filed a claim against the business on Sept. 30, declaring that the $100 million bargain went against federal antitrust laws and belonged to Zillow’s initiatives to wipe out “critical” market competitors.