The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Zillow and Redfin, accusing the real estate companies of entering what the regulator says is an illegal deal to suppress competition in online rental advertising.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the FTC alleges that this agreement started in February – when Zillow paid Redfin $100m. In exchange for that and other compensation, the commission said, Redfin agreed to end contracts with advertising partners, stop competing ads for multifamily properties for up to nine years and serve as a syndicator of Zillow listings on its own sites.
Redfin also fired hundreds of employees shortly after the announcement of this plan, Tuesday’s complaint notes, alleging that the company also helped Zillow hire “its pick” of these workers.
“Zillow paid millions of dollars to eliminate Redfin as an independent competitor in an already concentrated advertising market – one that’s critical for renters, property managers, and the health of the overall US housing market,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement Tuesday.
Guarnera added that Zillow and Redfin’s actions were a violation of federal antitrust laws. The agency said the alleged deal reduces competition in an already concentrated market and is likely to drive up the cost of advertising vacancies in rental buildings with more than 25 units. The deal also reduces the incentive for the companies to compete by making their sites easier for renters to use, the FTC said in the lawsuit filed in Alexandria, Virginia.
Zillow is a giant in the real estate space: it previously disclosed that its platform receives about 227 million unique visitors a month, and received 2.4bn visits between January and March 2025.
In a statement, a Zillow spokesperson maintained that its “listing syndication with Redfin benefits both renters and property managers”, adding that it had “expanded renters’ access to multifamily listings”. The Seattle-based company said the agreement was “pro-competitive and pro-consumer”.
A spokesperson for Redfin, which was acquired by Detroit-based mortgage giant Rocket Companies earlier this year, added that the company “strongly disagrees with the FTC’s allegations” and was confident about prevailing in court. Redfin reiterated the Zillow partnership had given its users access to more rental listings and advertising customers access to more renters – noting that by the end of 2024, the company had determined that its own number of advertising customers “couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining our rentals sales force”.
In its lawsuit, the FTC maintains that the agreement between Redfin and Zillow isn’t the partnership the two companies say it is.
This is not the first time this year that Zillow has faced allegations of anticompetitive behavior. In June, the real estate brokerage company Compass filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings.
In a filing with the US district court for the southern district of New York, Compass claimed that Zillow has implemented an exclusionary policy that says if a home seller and their real estate agent market their property off Zillow for more than one day, that Zillow and its allies, Redfin and eXp Realty, will ban that home from being listed on their search platforms.
“The Zillow ban seeks to ensure that all home listings in this country are steered on to its dominant search platform so Zillow can monetize each home listing and protect its monopoly,” Compass said in the lawsuit.
The FTC, which authorized filing Tuesday’s complaint in a 3-0 vote, is seeking to get the companies to end this deal, in addition to other relief from the court – such as potential divestiture of assets or business reconstruction “to restore the competition”.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
