NEW YORK CITY—U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas heard closing arguments Friday, Nov. 21, capping off a weeklong hearing between real estate giants Zillow and Compass. At the heart of the case is Compass’s Three-Phased Marketing (3-PM) Strategy, which allows homesellers to market properties privately before listing them publicly on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and…
The COURT REPORT is RISMedia’s weekly look at current and upcoming lawsuits, investigations and other legal developments around real estate. Four days of testimony set battle lines in Zillow-Compass showdown With top executives, brokers and a mob of journalists packing a high-rise federal courtroom in Manhattan last week, the public got its first glimpse of…
With Compass and Zillow locked into a high-stakes fight over listing restrictions and market power, company executives testified in federal court for the third day yesterday as Compass leadership addressed the specifics of its private listing-focused strategy, from alleged harm to its business from the Zillow rules, to how it communicated with agents. The trial—officially…
Editor’s Note: The Mortgage Mix is RISMedia’s biweekly highlight reel of need-to-know mortgage-industry happenings. Watch for it every other Friday afternoon. As of Nov. 20, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate sat at 6.26%, slightly up from the previous week’s reading of 6.24%. Tracking with higher rates, mortgage applications—tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association—found that…
While the uncertainty of the government shutdown is now more than a week behind us, consumer outlook on the economy has shown little improvement, per the latest index of Consumer Sentiment from the University of Michigan. In the latest index, consumer sentiment was reported at a near record low of 51; for reference, 100 is…
Despite a prolonged government shutdown that lasted throughout the month, October still saw a slight increase in existing-home sales, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). NAR’s October Existing-Home Sales report found that sales grew 1.2% to a rate of 4.10 million, slightly down from the 1.5% growth seen in…
New analysis by Zillow claims major disparities in how homes are marketed through Chicago’s private listing network, with homes in majority-white neighborhoods over twice as likely to be listed privately compared to those in majority-non-white areas. Released today, the research examined over 40,000 residential listings from Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), the multiple listing service…
After the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) made comprehensive updates to MLS policies—saying that most are meant to “modernize” and remove “outdated practices”—brokers who are currently suing NAR are citing the changes as an acknowledgment that these policies ran afoul of the law. In a court filing yesterday, lawyers representing three real estate professionals in…
After a period of relatively steady activity, home purchase applications fell back this week as mortgage rates reached recent multi-week highs. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reports that the market composite index—the measure of mortgage loan activity volume—decreased 5.2% from one week earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending Nov. 14, following…
Real estate firms are reporting housing affordability and rising as the biggest challenges they face, and expect to continue facing, according to a new report from the National Association of REALTORS®. NAR’s 2025 Profile of Real Estate Firms found that 56% of firms reported housing affordability as a major challenge they expect to continue facing…
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