Anthony Lamacchia on the listings battle between Zillow, Compass and MRED

HousingWire

On today’s episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Anthony Lamacchia, founder and CEO of Lamacchia Realty and Crush It in Real Estate, about the listings battle between Zillow, Compass and MRED, and why he thinks it’s bad for homebuyers and sellers.  Related to this episode:  Everything you need to know about Zillow’s listing war with MRED and Compass https://www.housingwire.com/articles/zillow-injunction-mred-idx-vow/  HousingWire | YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q  More info about HousingWire https://lnk.bio/housingwire  The Top 5:  What happens to mortgage rates if the Iran conflict is over? https://www.housingwire.com/articles/what-happens-to-mortgage-rates-if-the-iran-conflict-is-over/  Housing demand stays firm, pushing inventory close to negative YOY https://www.housingwire.com/articles/housing-demand-stays-firm-pushing-inventory-close-to-negative-yoy/  Judge orders MRED to restore Zillow listing feeds in Chicago https://www.housingwire.com/articles/judge-restores-zillow-mred-feeds/  AI adoption in mortgage servicing is accelerating, BlackWolf says https://www.housingwire.com/articles/ai-mortgage-servicing-adoption/  FHA will keep tri-merge credit reports amid shift to new scoring models https://www.housingwire.com/articles/fha-tri-merge-credit-reports/  To learn more about Total Expert click here. https://www.totalexpert.com/  The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate.

Transcript

00:07Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Anthony Lamacchia, the founder and CEO of Lamacchia

00:12Realty and Crush It! in Real Estate. He served in different leadership positions on the National

00:18Association of Realtors over the years. In 2025, he was the broker relations liaison.

00:23We're going to talk about the chaos around listings right now, which feels like the wild,

00:28wild west. But first, I want to thank our sponsor, Total Expert, for making this episode possible.

00:34And I want to do a quick review of what's trending on HousingWire.com. No surprise,

00:38our top story is on mortgage rates, what happens to rates if the Iran conflict is truly over.

00:43And the housing market tracker is getting a lot of play. Housing demand stays firm,

00:48pushing inventory close to negative. Then we have the story we'll be discussing today,

00:52judge orders MRED to restore Zillow listings feed in Chicago. Next is AI adoption and mortgage

00:59servicing is accelerating, and the FHA will keep tri-merge credit reports amid shifts to new

01:04scoring models. As always, there is a lot going on. Anthony, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

01:11Well, thank you very much for having me. And you're right about that. One thing about this business,

01:14there's no boring moments.

01:16There is really not. But I would say even the last six months has been crazy and the last month.

01:22So

01:22let's jump into what happened last week in Chicago. Some of our audience may not be familiar.

01:28But it really reflects the larger nationwide challenges, which I think are happening around

01:33the portals around listings. So the battle between Zillow, Midwest real estate, which we're going to call

01:39MRED and Compass. It really reached a tipping point last week when MRED suspended its IDX and

01:45VOW listing feeds to Zillow and Trulia after Zillow allegedly refused to cure what MRED called a

01:53material breach of its licensing agreements. The upshot is people woke up and there were very few

01:59Chicago listings on Zillow. And yet you could see a whole bunch of them on Compass. So maybe walk us

02:06through what that looked like. Well, I mean, this is certainly an interesting topic. And Robert

02:12Refkin is really the reason that this has become something that's center stage. And it's been that

02:17way for about 20 months. And to his credit, when he brings up an issue over and over, it gets

02:24a lot

02:24of press and it causes disruption. He is the CEO of Compass just for people. Yeah, CEO of Compass

02:31Holdings. And listen, I don't know him well. I've shaken his hand a couple of times. He's a perfectly

02:35polite guy. I have a lot of respect for him. What he's done in the industry is amazing. I mean,

02:41it's like every entrepreneur's dream to be the biggest player in an industry. But I don't agree

02:46with him on this particular topic. This particular topic, I can understand where he's coming from

02:52saying, hey, why are we allowing our listings to be taken over from Zillow and, you know, basically

02:58showed on Zillow. And I've said for years, Zillow has found a great way to get in between the

03:05consumer and the house. Okay, here's the house. You want that house consumer, then you got to pay

03:09us something, either pay to get in contact with that lead or a referral fee of some sort. So I

03:15understand where he's coming from. But I don't agree with the way he's going about it. I don't agree

03:23with much of it, because it's not best for consumers. And the reason that this started, you know,

03:28it's like a, what happened last week is like a war, right? When you think of, think of Pearl

03:35Harbor, okay, everyone says, Oh, they attacked us out of nowhere. Well, you read history, the United

03:40States put some tariffs and change some trade agreements on Japan in the year leading up to

03:45that and friction was really getting was starting to overflow. Well, what happened last week, what Zillow

03:51did once they made that agreement with MRED is they said, Okay, shut down Zillow's feed. Well,

03:56that wasn't completely out of nowhere. Their side of the argument is, Well, we did that

04:00because Zillow shouldn't be the one to say everybody that lists a home for sale has to

04:05put it on our website. And Zillow had stopped nine properties, a whopping nine properties,

04:10which by the way, were not all in that market. There were some around the country. But Robert

04:16found a way to create some leverage. And they made that agreement. Compass Holdings made that

04:21agreement with MRED. And they said, Okay, we're going to shut Zillow's feed off. So Zillow

04:27has no properties. Zillow naturally fires back goes to the court seeks an emergency injunction.

04:33And the judge basically comes up and says, Hey, Compass, you're not going to stop your feed,

04:37you know, MRED, you're not going to stop your feed. But Oh, by the way, Zillow, you're not

04:42going to keep nine people off the market. So he pretty much slapped both sides. There's absolutely

04:47no doubt in my mind whatsoever. There was far more disappointment on the compass side than on the

04:54Zillow side. And I know that the folks at compass. And if you look at Robert's post,

04:57they kind of spun it their way like, No, this is a good thing, because they basically told the whole

05:02industry that Zillow can't be the one to effectively say you can't be on their website unless you list

05:08from the beginning. Okay, yeah, I understand that argument. But we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be

05:14here if they didn't try to disrupt the National Association's clear cooperation policy that stemmed

05:21from 2019. I was in the I was in the meeting. I wasn't a part of it. But I was

05:24in the meeting in San

05:25Francisco. So this is, you know, starting to turn into a back and forth. And it's pretty ridiculous.

05:32Honestly, it's not necessary. And it's not what consumers want. Consumers need access. Buyers need

05:37access to all the homes for sale. Sellers need the ability to to market their property to everyone for

05:43sale. Okay, of course, there's going to be some 1% or point 01% cases of people wanting to

05:50be a little

05:51cautious or waiting before they list for sale. But we don't need to go turn the whole industry upside

05:56down and have all these lawsuits over it. People could just be a little bit more reasonable.

06:01So this is really at the heart of the issue is like, how how do consumers find the listings of

06:06the house? And who should be, you know, the one in control of that? Maybe walk us through the

06:12clear cooperation policy, what it was trying to do there. And then of course, we had the whole

06:16commission lawsuit settlement that I mean, I mean, things have been things have been upended for for

06:21the last three years. Yeah, yeah. And if you remember, you were on the debate that I did with

06:26attorney Michael Ketchmark. And I said, nobody will be better off because of this. I said sellers will

06:32still be paying the majority of the commissions, because mortgage companies are not going to allow

06:36buyers to finance commissions. That was what two years and five months ago, what's going on today,

06:41sellers are paying the majority of the commissions. Mortgage regulators still don't allow buyers to

06:47put their commission into the sale. No one's better off because of it. The whole settlement,

06:52the whole case, all of it was a bunch of crap. And they never should have did it in the

06:55first place.

06:56And those lawyers got away with murder. And they basically pillaged our pilfered our industry

07:02by a billion dollars, which has affected everyone, including buyers and sellers as well,

07:08realtors, broker owners, everybody. So when Ketchmark was in that debate saying,

07:13we're out for the corporations, the corporations. Yeah, the corporations are people, right? They're

07:19people. That's a political talking point. So it's absurd that that's happened. But putting that aside

07:25and looking at CCP, CCP stemmed because as from 2015 to 19, as inventory of homes for sales started

07:33to go down more and more, when inventory is low, it becomes more and more tempting.

07:39Or I shouldn't say tempting. It shouldn't be tempting. More and more possible to hoard a listing

07:46as a listing broker, try to sell it yourself or try to sell it within your office. That becomes more

07:51possible. Shouldn't be more tempting, but more possible. So this got discussed in San Francisco in

07:57November of 2019. I was in the room. The room was packed. It was standing room only. And I walked

08:03in

08:04that room thinking that I would be against the clear cooperation policy. But I heard one person

08:11after the other come up and talk about listings being hoarded, buyers not being able to find

08:15properties. I heard brokers talking about how they were worried about fair housing and, you know, preventing

08:24people from having access to properties. By the end of that hour and a half meeting, I said to myself

08:29and people that I was with, I hope it passes. We need this. This will ensure uniformity across the

08:37system. It will ensure that everyone gets the most access and all buyers have access to properties.

08:45Okay. So that passes and it goes into play in May of 2020. Well, thank God it did because this

08:52little

08:52thing named COVID happened and the housing inventory went from low to excessively low,

08:57which furthers the possibility and likelihood of hoarding listings. So we had that policy.

09:03Then Robert comes in, starts melting off about it two summers ago and saying it shouldn't be. I

09:09remember being at some events and he said, this isn't clear cooperation. This is forced cooperation.

09:15And many of us in the crowd are like, most of the MLS, I mean, we're in seven or eight

09:20MLSs.

09:21There's forms that you can get a delay form to put something on the market. There's plenty of times

09:26that people want to replace their rugs or whatever. Brokerages since the beginning of time have been,

09:30have been exposing listings within their company prior to public. And that's fine. But he kept going

09:36on and on and on and on. And he's trying to break the system. He's trying to break the system

09:40because look what just happened. He took over anywhere. Right. So now he has enough market

09:45share in some markets that he's saying, I want to monopolize this. And I want to keep as many

09:51deals within the family of companies as possible. Now for small players in the industry, that's a

09:57problem. And it will even be a problem for him in places that he doesn't have high market share.

10:02But for larger regional players like us, if he shuts off our listings, we're going to shut off our,

10:07he shuts off his listings to our people. We're going to shut off ours to his.

10:12And that's when a listing war breaks out. There are some people in this business that think it's

10:17going to happen. I spoke to a very prominent, smart, in the know MLS CEO last week that said,

10:24this is the beginning of the war. There's going to be a listing war. And I said, well,

10:28I hope you're wrong. I still don't think there will be. I think Robert is just pushing the envelope

10:33as far as he can. But I think that he's smart enough to know that he shouldn't go that far,

10:38because if he does, it's going to it's going to be retaliation. And then his agents are going to

10:43have trouble accessing listings, too. So I suspect it'll stop right before that. But we are sure in

10:49an interesting time. So I think the thing that strikes me on that is that, you know, how how does

10:54this benefit the consumer, whether they're on the buyer or the seller and it like it just makes it more

11:00difficult? Like if you're in Chicago and you wake up and you have a home on the market, you're like,

11:04wait, why can't anyone find it? Or, you know, and then it comes back and it's confusing. And they

11:09don't understand the system in the in the first place. And then you throw this kind of stuff in

11:14there. And I feel like it it does not do any any favors for real estate reputation.

11:21Well, you mentioned a couple of key things there. Number one, we are now in a market where inventory

11:26is going up. So remember how I said when inventory is going down, the possibility to be able to sell

11:33a

11:33home in house goes up on inventory goes up, that possibility goes down right now. He's really at the

11:41wrong time of this. Had he set out on this crusade in 2018 and 19, he would have had more

11:47luck from a

11:49sales perspective. Now we're in a market where inventory is going up pressure from sellers for

11:54maximum maximum exposure is going to go up, particularly on the second half of the year.

12:00So here we are late May. Okay. As we get to the second half of the year, when there's much

12:04more

12:04inventory, because that's how it is every year, particularly in the northern states. Okay.

12:10His agents aren't going to have temptation to do that because they want maximum exposure. And those

12:16agents there in the Midwest where their listings were going to be, where we're not on Zillow that

12:22only lasted about 30 or so hours. Okay. If that went on and on, the first thing that would have

12:27happened is the sellers that have homes that aren't selling, they get bullshit. Okay. They go searching

12:33online and they don't see their home on Zillow. They'll be calling their agents off the hook angry.

12:38And it won't just be the people that aren't selling, but the ones that aren't selling are the ones that

12:42go ballistic. Okay. So had that gone into a week or two weeks, you would have saw sellers going crazy,

12:50calling their agents. The agents would have went crazy, including the agents at Compass. They would

12:54have been calling Robert. And I believe he would have caved and he would have had to put them back

12:59on Zillow. And I'm not saying this to defend Zillow or be a proponent of Zillow. I've banged heads

13:05with Zillow too. And I know they overplay their hand a bit, but on this particular subject,

13:09I'm on Zillow side on this one. So had that gone on and on, it would have been much bigger

13:15of a

13:15problem, but I got to give Robert credit. I mean, the guy's got guts. He's right on his Facebook

13:19with a picture that says no listings on Zillow or just a few. And look at all the listings on

13:25Compass, right? Is that actually going to trickle down to all the consumers? And are you going to just

13:31overnight change consumer behavior? Zillow kicks all of our butts online, all of us put together.

13:38Okay. We have one of the most prominent logged onto websites, at least in Massachusetts for real

13:44estate. Okay. We're talking, there's weeks we have 40, 50,000 unique visitors going on our site.

13:50It pales in comparison to Zillow. It pales in comparison. They have the most power online.

13:57And for me, with our listings and our agents, I want our listings on that website because I want

14:04maximum exposure for our listings. I know what it's like to have listings that aren't selling.

14:09I was the number one agent in Massachusetts at 29 years old. So I know what it's like to be

14:14there

14:14when your listings aren't selling. I'm not convinced that Robert does or as many people on that side do,

14:20but when we get to that, that will create real problems for what he's trying to do.

14:24So I had Nakia Wright on a stage at the gathering recently. And I asked her, I was like,

14:30what, what role should the MLSs play? Like when, when NAR looks at this, like what,

14:37what role do they think the MLSs should play? And I thought she had a good answer,

14:41but I would ask you the same thing. And also like, if you take a step back and you're the

14:44consumer,

14:45it's like, why are there so many people involved here?

14:48Well, the MLSs play an extremely important role. Okay. Without them, we wouldn't have uniformity.

14:54We'd be, listen, all of this stuff is going to turn us into Europe and South America.

15:00If we don't have the MLSs, it's going to, we're going to end up with buyers having to search 10

15:06websites to find listings for sale. Sellers are going to have to list with tipping to hell with

15:10exclusive listings. They'll be gone. They'll have to be gone. Because if you're in the shoes

15:14of the home seller and you want maximum exposure, you're going to have to list with 10 people.

15:19So it's a bad, bad idea. The MLSs, they play an important role. Do I think some of them have

15:26overplayed their hand? Yes. Are there moments that I hear what Robert says or see some of the pressure

15:31on them? And I say, eh, they deserve it a little bit. Yes. Because I think some of them got

15:35a little

15:36too power hungry over the years with some of their rules. However, if there aren't some repercussions

15:41for agents not following the system, I mean, Sarah, you and I, if there were no such thing

15:47as speeding tickets, we would, when I leave work today, I'd go 150 down Main Street. Maybe not 150,

15:54110. Right? So Robert one time said they shouldn't be fining people. Well, okay, I heard there's a

16:00regional California MLS that's fining $5,000. That's a little ridiculous. But some amount of fines,

16:06some amount of hand slap to keep people in line, well, that's life. That's necessary.

16:11So interesting. Do you think that if you're the realtor and you have these fragmented,

16:19say, say we go to less of, of the system we have now, don't you become more important because you're

16:23the one who, who can tie it all together for the consumer? They can't just go find it on their

16:27own?

16:28No, because you'll have a real access problem. You know, now you can go on one website and see 99

16:34%

16:34of what's for sale, right? If things start going all over the place, it's, it's going to be a real

16:40problem and there'll be zero loyalty to the agent. And think about it. We just, in the settlement,

16:47there was, it passed that you have to have buyer, buyer contracts. Okay. Buyer contracts,

16:53they're hard enough to get loyalty from the client. Clients are onto it now. They're going in more,

16:58open houses are busier than ever. If this happens, that'll get undone as well.

17:02Interesting. So from your perspective, there's not really an upside to, to fragmenting this more

17:09than it already is. There's no upside. It's a bad idea, mostly for the clients, obviously also for

17:14those in real estate as well. Anthony, I love having you on. Thank you for being on and, and just

17:19giving

17:19us your unvarnished and your, uh, I love, you know, the way that you do with your hands reminds me

17:23of

17:23Logan Motor Shama. You guys take up all this space, very passionate. Um, and I appreciate you. You're,

17:28you're a voice for, um, at least part of the industry, right? Maybe other people disagree

17:33with you, but you're really coming up there. And the thing that I appreciate is you're like,

17:36what does this mean to the consumer at the end of the day? If you, if we're not making that

17:41experience better, that's not going to turn out well, long-term for the industry. We already know

17:45that, right? Correct. You're absolutely right. Well, thank you very much for having me. And yeah,

17:50I'm Italian. I'm always talking loud, moving my hands.

17:53Appreciate it. We will talk again soon. Take care. Bye.

17:58Bye.

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