In November of last year, I wrote that the battle between Zillow and MRED must be fought. It's taken a few months, but that battle is now fully joined:
Zillow filed a federal antitrust lawsuit on May 12 against Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), a multiple listing service serving the greater Chicago area and parts of three neighboring states, and Compass, the country’s largest real estate brokerage.
MRED and Compass are colluding to hide home listings from buyers — and conspired to punish Zillow for not going along with it.
A lawsuit is but one front in the wider war. I suspect that the bigger battle is happening outside of the courts, but it was widely expected among those in the know that a lawsuit was more likely than not. So here it is.
The first step in covering a significant lawsuit is reading the actual complaint. It is not enough to read just news coverage. Once we understand what the actual claims are, and how the lawyers have crafted the narrative to support those claims, we might analyze what the key issues may be in the legal fight ahead.
Let's go ahead and do that now. As always, I am not your lawyer, none of this is legal advice, and you should consult your own counsel for actual legal advice.
