Zillow loses thousands of listings in the fight for “hidden” homes.

But Zillow insists that Zillow Preview is “not the same” as MRED thinks. In a statement to Ars, Zillow defended the pre-sale listings as “available for any buyer to view and comply with our transparency policy.”

“The private network is privately owned, and is available to buyers who work with a brokerage or agent,” Zillow said. “The purpose of the Preview is to help sell the home. The purpose of PLNs is to hide the home to compel more buyers to work with your brokerage.”

Homebuyers in the US in the past few years have faced challenges, including “low mortgages and high home prices,” as housing stocks have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, 2026 Experian. predict he said. While listings are expected to rise slightly this year, Zillow’s legal battle shows that some businesses may be motivated to hide new listings to increase profits.

Zillow worries that the MRED/Compass plan will block platforms that promote more transparency from competing with stronger network providers. That will confuse buyers and sellers in major markets like Chicago, Zillow says.

“Defendants’ scheme harms buyers and sellers by encouraging businesses not to list properties on the market unless the listing fails to sell confidentially, thereby creating barriers to information, increasing access and affordability problems, and reducing the number of buyers and listings that make the real estate market work,” Zillow says.

In its complaint, Zillow said that MRED and Compass “control 99 percent of the market for Chicagoland real estate listing platforms.” He must say, they have worked “in lockstep” and “secretly” that “in this way MRED’s sole power and control over Chicagoland listings feeds to force competitors like Zillow to show wild listings in secret, abandon the approval process for buyer listings, and block the nascent competing offers that prefer opportunities more than themselves.

“MRED and Compass have teamed up to change the consumer landscape at a time when American families can’t afford it, eliminate competition, demystify housing and create a marketplace that generates more information from buyers and sellers so Compass can capture more of every transaction,” Zillow told Ars.