Harrison McAvoy, SCL partner, was recently interviewed by HousingWire about major antitrust litigation affecting the residential real estate industry, between Compass and Zillow over Zillow’s mandatory rules for brokers, in their article “A legal analysis of Compass, Zillow’s antitrust lawsuit”:
“Compass offered evidence of an effect on Compass and an effect on competition generally, as well as harm to consumer choice, related to seller’s having a say in how their home should be marketed,” McAvoy said. “It’s not clear that Zillow has rebutted in any way the notion that the policy stops sellers from choosing how their home should be marketed.”
In McAvoy’s view, Zillow’s main argument is that the policy benefits both buyers and sellers, but he finds it questionable that sellers would benefit from having fewer choices in marketing their homes.
“It seems that Zillow would need to show that agents are affirmatively harming their clients by marketing homes publicly but not on Zillow even if that’s only for a short period of time,” he said.
He added that based on the evidence presented, it remains unclear how buyers are harmed by having to look somewhere other than Zillow to find listings. Moving forward, for Zillow to present a better argument, he said the defendant will need to explain exactly how the policy benefits buyers and sellers and prove that those benefits overcome the harm to seller choice.
In McAvoy’s view, Zillow’s main argument is that the policy benefits both buyers and sellers, but he finds it questionable that sellers would benefit from having fewer choices in marketing their homes.
“It seems that Zillow would need to show that agents are affirmatively harming their clients by marketing homes publicly but not on Zillow even if that’s only for a short period of time,” he said.
He added that based on the evidence presented, it remains unclear how buyers are harmed by having to look somewhere other than Zillow to find listings. Moving forward, for Zillow to present a better argument, he said the defendant will need to explain exactly how the policy benefits buyers and sellers and prove that those benefits overcome the harm to seller choice.
For the full article from HousingWire, click here (paywall).
