In this YouTube commentary, Peter Lohmann explains how Zillow allegedly paid Redfin $100 million to stop competing on rental listings, a deal that helped Zillow dominate the rental‑listing market. He describes the anti‑competitive consequences for property managers, noting a FTC investigation that led to a settlement requiring Redfin to relaunch an independent rental‑ads platform within six months while still maintaining a syndication partnership with Zillow. Lohmann cites FTC claims of a 14.5 % increase in listing costs and over 400 job cuts, and acknowledges that Zillow, Redfin, and CoStar still control about 80 % of the market. He expresses enthusiasm for the settlement, frames it as a win against Zillow’s monopoly, and says he will sign up for Redfin’s new platform, urging viewers to support competition in rental listings.
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Have you been following this Zillow Redfin situation? So basically a few years ago, uh, it came out that Zillow and Redfin reached a deal to not compete on rental listings. I think the details here show that Zillow paid Redfin $100 million if Redfin would stop competing with Zillow for rental listings. So if you've wondered why over the last few years it seems like Zillow has gobbled up all of the other rental listing platforms, basically all of of your leads are coming from Zillow. Part of the reason is because of deals like this. They either purchased directly all of their rental listing platform competitors, or they made behind-the-scenes backdoor deals like this one we found out about with Redfin, where they basically just said, hey, we're going to give you a bunch of money, don't compete with us on rental listings. The problem is, as a property manager and as a rental owner, you want competition for rental listings because once there's only 1 or 2 platforms where all of the rental listings are and where all the eyeballs are, we lose all of our power and we basically have to play ball with these platforms. Otherwise our rental listings aren't going to appear where renters are searching for them. So the FTC got wind of this. They went after Zillow and this has been working its way through the courts. Big legal fight over this. It was just about to go to trial and now we've learned that the FTC and Zillow have reached a settlement agreement. And I really like the terms of this deal, actually. The FTC basically said, hey, Zillow, you need to allow Redfin to compete with you for rental listings. So now part of this agreement is Redfin gets 6 months to relaunch an independent rental ads platform. They can still have their syndication partnership with Zillow, which is fine. The FTC is claiming there was a 14.5% rent hike in the cost to publish rental listings. I believe that. And over 400 jobs were gutted. Okay. Nevertheless, Zillow, Redfin, and CoStar still control 80% the rental listing market. So that's not great. We still have a real lack of competition. So I'm really excited about this. And, you know, I love to see Zillow get smacked around. So it's going to be really fun to watch Redfin reenter the space and compete with Zillow and CoStarApartments.com. And I'm curious how much traction they're going to get. Are rental listings appearing on Redfin going to get a meaningful eyeball share from renters who are looking for rental homes and apartments? I mean, I'm going to sign up as soon as they're available. Why not? Probably going to be free or very cheap. And anything we can do to reduce Zillow's chokehold on the rental listing platform monopoly basically that they have right now is a great thing. So really excited to see this and let's see how it pans out.
