Who decides where listings show up, Zillow, Compass or the MLS?

The briefs are in. The witnesses are done. A federal judge in Chicago now holds the question the whole industry keeps asking: who controls where a listing gets seen? Here is the part no ruling will answer for you. Zillow, Compass and Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) spent the first half of July trading post-hearing briefs in Zillow’s antitrust case, and the language tells you how far apart they are. In a 48-page filing, Zillow argued that MRED and Compass moved “in lockstep” to block its Listing Access Standards, and accused Compass of having “laundered its failed private exclusive listings through MRED” to trigger a rules violation and justify cutting Zillow’s feed. Zillow pointed to an October 2025 email in which Compass CEO Robert Reffkin urged multiple MLSs to “discipline” Zillow by terminating its feed access if the standards were not “immediately repealed.” MRED and Compass told the opposite story. In their joint 40-page brief, they argued that “any harm, if it exists at all, is self-inflicted.” “If Zillow wants MRED’s feed, the ‘lifeblood’ of its business that it receives virtually for free, all Zillow has to do is not subjectively ban listings,” they wrote. “It is as simple ...