Zillow is fighting back against a push to make real estate listings more exclusive

• Zillow said it's banning listings that are initially selectively marketed to the public.
• The policy targets the selective sharing of listings before they appear on sites like Zillow.
• Now listings that are made public must be widely shared within a day in order to appear on Zillow.

Zillow announced a new policy Wednesday that it said was motivated by one principle: "A listing marketed to any buyer should be marketed to every buyer."

Under the company's new listing access standards, homes that are listed for sale but only to a limited group — or not made visible to all potential buyers via the common channels — will not be allowed to appear on Zillow.

The policy is a response to a push by some real estate brokerages to selectively share their listings, rather then make them widely visible from the jump, such as on sites like Zillow or Redfin, as Business Insider's James Rodriguez reported Wednesday.

For instance, Compass, the largest real estate brokerage in the US by sales volume, uses a marketing strategy that includes listing properties on a "Coming Soon" page before listing them more widely on sites like Zillow.

Zillow's new policy means that in order for a listing to ever appear on the site, it needs to be submitted to a local database of homes for sale called a Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, and published on sites like Zillow within a day of being initially marketed, on a brokerage's own site, on social media, or via a yard sign.

"Our standards are straightforward: If a listing is marketed directly to consumers without being listed on the MLS and made widely available where buyers search for homes, it will not be published on Zillow," the company's statement said.

Zillow also said the practice of selectively sharing listings hurts consumers and creates confusion in the marketplace.

"It's a bait-and-switch move, where agents or brokerages try to get the best of both worlds — dangling a listing to gain more business, only to turn around and market it widely later," the statement said, adding: "Consumers should not have to wonder whether the home that might be perfect for them is hidden behind a gate they didn't know existed."