CoStar Group continues aggressive posture toward Zillow Group Andy Florance, the founder and CEO of CoStar Group, which has aggressively jumped into the residential real estate portal arena with its recent purchase of Homesnap and Homes.com, has developed an aggressive tone toward Zillow Group. His recent interview with Brad Inman at Inman Connect revealed how he’s hoping to position his firm’s real estate play in relation to the nation’s dominant portal. A backdrop to the conversation was Homesnap’s October launch of a New York City portal, Citysnap, that will compete with Zillow-owned New York City portal StreetEasy. While Zillow Group sells advertising and leads to agents for placement on other agents’ listings, CoStar Group has a focused strategy of only placing the listing agent’s contact info on listings on its sites.

A critical analysis of the Clear Cooperation Policy Inman conducted a multipart investigative series on Clear Cooperation Policy, which NAR implemented in 2020. The policy, intended to curb property marketing that illegitimately circumvent the MLS, limits the ability for agents to market listings to a max of one business day before it goes active in the MLS. The series includes a discussion of how, in some markets, pocket listings continue at high rates. For example, one study reveals that the percentage of homes sold within a day of going active in the MLS (a sign that the home was actually sold before going live in the MLS) shot up in markets around the country after the Clear Cooperation Policy took effect. Irrespective of consumer benefit, brokerages and agents face big incentives with marketing homes off the MLS, a practice that has been commonplace for decades. As the industry looks to keep the integrity of the MLS intact, workarounds to the Clear Cooperation Policy as covered in this series make it clear that the practice is alive and well and will continue.