Anthony Lamacchia: Zillow-MRED battle shows risks of ‘listing war’

I interviewed Anthony Lamacchia on this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast about mounting tensions over listing distribution and MLS rules. He is the founder and CEO of Lamacchia Realty and Crush It in Real Estate — and a fiery advocate for Realtors.

Lamacchia had a lot to say about the ongoing battle between Zillow, Compass and MRED and the disruption to the Chicago housing market last week. That’s when many consumers woke up to find that local listings had largely disappeared from Zillow but remained visible on the Compass website. (Read our coverage of the complicated backstory of that battle in this article: Everything you need to know about Zillow’s listing war with MRED and Compass).

Lamacchia lays much of the blame for the current listing chaos at the feet of Compass CEO Robert Reffkin, who has spearheaded the fight for companies to be able to market their properties as private listings. This puts Reffkin and Compass at odds with some multiple listings services (MLSs) and portals like Zillow.

In Lamacchia’s view, the dispute is part of a longer-running campaign by Reffkin to challenge NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy, which was designed to ensure that all buyers would have access to all property listings. Below is a summary of our conversation.

Lamacchia’s take: Zillow vs. Compass and the risk of a ‘listing war’

Lamacchia credited Reffkin for elevating the issue many agents have with Zillow but disagreed with the strategy. He said he understands the concern that “Zillow has found a great way to get in between the consumer and the house,” monetizing access through lead fees or referrals, but argued that restricting listings on major portals is not in consumers’ best interest.

He framed the Chicago blowup as a culmination of long-building friction, comparing it to a conflict that erupts only after years of underlying pressure. Once Compass and MRED reached an agreement, he said, the MLS “shut down Zillow’s feed” and Zillow “naturally fires back” via the courts.

The practical impact for Chicago-area consumers and sellers was immediate: for roughly 30 hours, many local listings vanished from Zillow but remained on Compass. Lamacchia said that if the outage had lasted a week or more, seller and agent backlash would have been severe, particularly for properties that were already sitting on the market.

“Sellers that have homes that aren’t selling… go searching online, and they don’t see their home on Zillow,” he said. Those clients, he argued, would quickly “go ballistic,” pressuring their agents, who would in turn pressure brokerage leadership.

Despite his critiques of Zillow over the years, Lamacchia said that in this particular dispute he sides with the portal because of the need for maximum listing exposure.

Clear Cooperation Policy

On Clear Cooperation, Lamacchia recalled being in the packed NAR meetings in San Francisco in 2019 when the policy was debated and ultimately adopted. Initially skeptical, he said that after hearing broker after broker describe listing hoarding and fair housing concerns in a low-inventory market, he concluded the policy was necessary.

The rule, which took effect in 2020 just as the pandemic drove inventory to historic lows, requires that within a set timeframe, listings marketed publicly must be submitted to the MLS. Lamacchia believes it prevented widespread off-MLS “pocket listing” practices that could have limited buyer access and raised fair housing issues.

He linked current tensions to Reffkin’s vocal opposition to Clear Cooperation, describing the Compass chief’s push as an attempt to “break the system” now that Compass controls Anywhere’s brokerage network and has significant market share in key metros.

Is a ‘listing war’ coming?

Lamacchia said at least one prominent MLS CEO told him the Chicago incident could be “the beginning of the war” — a cycle where large firms start cutting each other off from listings. He believes that if any major brokerage moves to keep its listings from competitors’ agents, others will retaliate, leading to fragmented inventory and reduced access for buyers.

He expressed cautious optimism that the industry will stop short of that outcome, arguing that the practical downsides for large players are too severe: “If he does, it’s going to be retaliation, and then his agents are going to have trouble accessing listings too.”

Inventory trends weaken the case for hoarding listings

Market conditions are another constraint. Lamacchia pointed out that as inventory rises, the ability to sell homes entirely in-house falls. In a higher-inventory environment, both agents and sellers are more focused on maximum exposure across portals and brokerages.

He expects seller pressure for broad marketing to grow in the second half of the year, particularly in northern markets where inventory is seasonally higher. That timing, he argued, makes this a difficult moment to successfully push for tighter control of listing distribution.

The MLS role and the risk of fragmentation

Lamacchia defended the MLS as core infrastructure for a unified, transparent market. Without MLSs, he said, the U.S. would begin to resemble countries in Europe and South America where buyers must search many brokerage sites to see a complete picture of inventory and sellers often feel compelled to list with multiple firms.

He acknowledged that some MLSs have “overplayed their hand” with aggressive rules or large fines, but maintained that some level of enforcement is necessary to keep data accurate and widely available. Without consequences for noncompliance, he said, “we wouldn’t have uniformity.”

For real estate professionals, MLS fragmentation would not necessarily increase their value proposition, in his view. Instead, it would create “a real access problem,” undermine buyer loyalty at a time when buyer-broker agreements are already a difficult sell and potentially unravel recent efforts to formalize buyer representation.

Lamacchia ended the interview by stressing that any structural change — whether in listing rules, portal leverage or commission practices — should be judged by its impact on the consumer. If reforms do not clearly improve the experience for buyers and sellers, he warned, they risk further eroding trust in the real estate system.

This article was written by Sarah Wheeler and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.