New York
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Home-search web site Zillow allegedly paid its rival Redfin $100 million {dollars} to stamp out competitors within the online itemizing enterprise, the Federal Trade Commission mentioned in a lawsuit on Tuesday.
As a part of their February 2025 deal, Redfin allegedly agreed that its web site could be “an exclusive syndicator of Zillow listings,” that means Redfin would basically simply copy over the listings from Zillow, the FTC mentioned in a statement.
The FTC additionally accused Redfin of agreeing to finish its contracts with promoting prospects and cease competing within the promoting marketplace for multifamily properties for up to 9 years.
Zillow and Redfin are among the many largest rental itemizing web sites within the United States by site visitors and income, the FTC mentioned within the lawsuit. The company alleged that the $100 million cost paved the best way for Zillow to overwhelmingly take over an business that hundreds of thousands of Americans use to discover a place to dwell, in addition to property managers procuring tenants.
The FTC alleged that this unlawful elimination in competitors would lead to larger costs and worse phrases for multifamily unit promoting, and would additionally cut back incentives to entice would-be renters to use their service.
“This agreement is nothing more than an end run around competition that insulates Zillow from head-to-head competition on the merits with Redfin for customers advertising multifamily buildings,” the lawsuit mentioned.
In a press release on Tuesday, a Zillow spokesperson mentioned the syndication settlement is “pro-competitive and pro-consumer by connecting property managers to more high-intent renters.”
“Our listing syndication with Redfin benefits both renters and property managers and has expanded renters’ access to multifamily listings across multiple platforms,” the spokesperson mentioned.
NCS reached out to Redfin for remark.
The lawsuit additionally famous that Redfin fired about 450 of its workers, no less than a few of which had been related to the web itemizing promoting enterprise. After these firings, Redfin allegedly helped handpick a few of these workers to work for Zillow.
In Tuesday’s grievance, the FTC requested the court docket to finish the settlement and weigh a possible divestiture of property.
Meanwhile, Zillow is within the midst of different authorized disputes.
In June, the corporate was sued by real estate brokerage Compass, which accused Zillow of participating in an anticompetitive conspiracy to preserve its dominance over digital residence listings. While Zillow mentioned it was working within the pursuits of client transparency, Compass mentioned Zillow provides prices to the home-buying course of.
NCS’s Samantha Delouya contributed to this report.