[I have a business relationship with one or more companies mentioned here.]
I'm late to this because I decided to go to the range for the first time in weeks for desperately needed practice. No internet all morning, but... the texts and calls started rolling in pretty early. So I'm on it like white on rice.
It appears that Zillow has announced its new Coming Soon program called Zillow Preview:
SEATTLE, March 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Zillow Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: Z and ZG) today announced Zillow PreviewSM, a new product that brings pre-market home listings into the open by making them publicly visible on Zillow and Trulia. At a time when some real estate brokerages are harming consumers by hiding listings in private networks, Zillow Preview allows brokerages to broadly share listings before they hit the active market so consumers can access them. It launches next month with initial partners that each align with Zillow's pro-transparency, pro-consumer principles, including large-scale brokerages and franchisors Keller Williams, REMAX, HomeServices of America, Side and United Real Estate. These pre-market listings will be exclusively available on Zillow, Trulia and their own listing brokerage and agent sites.
In a growing number of markets, the public cannot see pre-market homes, including listings often referred to as "coming soon." Zillow Preview brings these homes out of the shadows and into the daylight, making them publicly visible instead of confined to closed systems, while working within MLS frameworks and supporting brokers and agents in complying with local rules.
I know that we are supposed to forget that the reason why the public cannot see pre-market homes is because Zillow itself opposed it for so long. But hey, better late than never!
The list of initial partners is interesting for a glaring absence: eXp. The CEOs of KW, RE/MAX, HomeServices, Side and United Real Estate did not, from my memory, go on a lengthy PR push with Zillow decrying hiding listings. Leo Pareja of eXp did, and eXp was the main partner with Zillow when Zillow launched ZLAS. One would imagine he would be a main partner when Zillow abandons "consumer-first commitment to real estate transparency" as well.
Coming at the heels of the big Redfin-Compass announcement, this move strikes me as one that was long in the works, held as a contingency plan, and then launched after Redfin-Compass did not result in those two companies getting burned to the ground by the industry. I could have told Zillow that they would not get any pushback; hell, I did tell them that along with all of you on these pages for lo these many years.
I think you can get industry reactions, first takes, and whatever shallow news coverage you want across the industry media. You come here for the in-depth, so let's get deep, shall we? What does this move mean for Zillow, for Compass, for Redfin, for Homes.com, for the MLS, and for the industry as a whole? I don't know that I have the answer to all of those, but I certainly have thoughts.