NYC-Based StreetEasy adds Zillow-like ban for private listings

StreetEasy is reviving a dormant policy in an effort to crack down on private listings.

The New York City-based listing platform updated its policies on Thursday to ban listings that are not uploaded to the site on the same calendar day that they are publicly marketed. The new policy takes effect on Sept. 17.

The update closely mirrors how Zillow, StreetEasy’s parent company, handles private listings. Both policies allow agents two violations before imposing a ban on all subsequent listings that are deemed to have been publicly marketed before being uploaded to the company’s websites.

The punishment adds to an update announced last May, which banned agents from StreetEasy tools like its Experts lead generation program if they are found to be using private listings.

StreetEasy has technically had a similar policy to ban publicly marketed listings in place since 2022, but it’s not clear how strictly that penalty has been enforced in recent years. The update seems to make it clear that the platform will be more closely monitoring listings entering its site going forward.

StreetEasy’s new policy is the latest indication that the fight over where and when listings are publicly displayed has finally landed in New York after Compass and Zillow have spent the last year duking it out on the national stage and in other secondary markets.

Compass has been pushing its private listing strategy, which involves marketing listings away from platforms like Zillow and StreetEasy for over a year now, but its business model took on new significance after its $1.6 billion January acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, which brought brands including Corcoran, Sotheby’s and Coldwell Banker under its umbrella. The deal added almost 90,000 company-owned brokerage agents and 280,000 franchise agents to Compass’ network and brought the firm significant market share in cities including New York and Chicago.

The policy announcement didn’t name Compass, but in an August blog post on the company website, StreetEasy general manager Caroline Burton called out the brokerage’s private listing strategy as detrimental to consumers.

“One brokerage’s leadership is deliberately making fewer homes visible to buyers to boost their own market position,” she wrote. “It’s a pattern that’s been building for more than a year. But this move is the most aggressive version of it yet, and it’s time to call it what it is: artificial scarcity and gatekeeping to benefit one firm, at the cost of everyone else.”

Compass hit back at the language change as the latest consequence stirred up by its fight in other markets with Zillow.

“This is the same coercive playbook Zillow has used across the country, using its monopolistic power to punish sellers who choose to market their homes off its website. Now StreetEasy is saying the same thing in New York: ‘Give us your listing first, or we’ll punish you,’” a spokesperson said in a statement.

A heated summer

It was not until this summer that Compass appeared to throw its newfound weight around in the New York City market.

In July, Compass convened top agents in the city from Compass, Corcoran and Sotheby’s International Realty to advise them to temporarily remove listings from StreetEasy beginning in August. In the first week of August, Manhattan for-sale listings on StreetEasy fell 7 percent from the prior week, more than double the typical seasonal decline.

StreetEasy has been quick to respond with policies that appeared to target Compass’ size and strategy.

Last month, the listing platform updated its popular Experts lead generation program to ban agents who are part of companies that make up at least 20 percent of the program from joining, which only applies to Compass and its affiliated brokerages like Corcoran and Sotheby’s.

The program is particularly popular with newer agents looking to generate buyer leads, making it harder for Compass, Corcoran and Sotheby’s to recruit less experienced agents who now won’t have access to StreetEasy Experts. “So many new agents built their entire book of business off of StreetEasy Experts,” the Agency’s Michael Birlya previously told The Real Deal.

StreetEasy has used access to its Experts program to penalize agents using private listings as well. Last April, StreetEasy announced that agents found marketing listings off of its platform would be removed from the Experts program and lose access to future StreetEasy tools and data.

StreetEasy’s new policy adds another layer of punishment for agents using private listings. In an update on its website, StreetEasy clarified what defines public marketing, a term of art rather than science in the industry. Publicly marketed listings included listings shown “on a brokerage website or portal, including behind a consumer registration wall,” which seems to encompass both of Compass’ listing strategies, with properties labeled as private exclusives and “Coming Soon”.

Private Exclusives are not shown anywhere online, but their existence appears behind a consumer registration link. Coming Soons are displayed on Compass.com and Redfin, but are not syndicated to platforms like Zillow or StreetEasy.

Zillow’s listing ban, which allows for Coming Soon listings but not Private Exclusives, has appeared to impact Compass’ marketing strategy. Research from industry analyst Mike DelPrete found that Compass’ “Coming Soon” inventory nearly tripled this August from last year, while its “Private Exclusive” inventory fell by almost 30 percent.

StreetEasy also defines public marketing as using the Real Estate Board of New York’s Participants Only status in its Residential Listing Service, which shares listings with other brokers with RLS access, but does not syndicate the listings to other platforms.

Using Participants Only in lieu of StreetEasy was one of the steps Compass suggested agents in the weeks leading up to Labor Day.

This article has been updated with a statement from Compass.