Dive Brief:
- Zillow and Redfin must face a major antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and five state attorneys general after a federal judge denied their motion to dismiss it. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ruled May 6 that the FTC plausibly alleged that the defendants violated antitrust law and the case should proceed.
- The two housing listing giants entered into a partnership in February 2025 in which Zillow paid Redfin $100 million to essentially exit the rental listing market. Regulators claim the arrangement enables Zillow to dominate online rental ads — a highly concentrated market — in violation of antitrust laws.
- The defendants claimed that the lawsuit is based on a flawed understanding of the rental listing market and said their partnership benefits consumers by giving them access to more listings. However, in his four-page order rejecting their motion to dismiss, Trenga cited “what appears from the face of the Complaint to be clearly anti-competitive conduct.”
Dive Insight:
In September 2025, the FTC filed a lawsuit against Zillow and Redfin in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging the two companies conspired to eliminate competition in the rental listings market in violation of federal antitrust laws. Zillow and Redfin operate two of the three leading rental listing service advertising networks in the U.S., the FTC said in its complaint, with CoStar operating the other.
In October 2025, attorneys general in Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Washington state filed a suit with similar allegations, saying that the partnership harms property operators and renters by likely leading to higher prices and worse terms, and reduces incentives for Zillow and Redfin to compete for renters. Trenga ruled in November 2025 that the two separate antitrust lawsuits should be combined.
The defendants sought to get the suit tossed on several grounds, per Trenga’s order. In a hearing on Feb. 25, Zillow and Redfin argued that the plaintiffs failed to allege that the defendants have sufficient market power to harm competition, and that defects in the complaint's market definition and market power-related allegations required dismissal.
Trenga said those arguments were not strong enough to dismiss the lawsuit, particularly in light of “the Court’s obligation at this procedural stage to consider the allegations of the Complaint in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, with all reasonable inferences drawn in their favor.”
“The Plaintiffs have alleged facts that make plausible their claims under the Sherman Act (Count I), the Clayton Act (Count II), and the FTC Act (Count III),” Trenga said.
Redfin said it strongly disagrees with the FTC’s allegations and remains confident it will be vindicated by a court of law, a Redfin spokesperson told Multifamily Dive in an email.
“Our partnership with Zillow has given Redfin.com visitors access to more rental listings and our advertising customers access to more renters. By the end of 2024, it was clear that the existing number of Redfin advertising customers couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining our rentals sales force,” the spokesperson said. “Partnering with Zillow cut those costs and enabled us to invest more in rental-search innovations on Redfin.com, directly benefiting apartment seekers.”
Zillow said in a statement following the denial that the decision simply allows the case to move forward.
“We remain confident we will demonstrate the pro-competitive and consumer benefits of our partnership with Redfin in court. In the meantime, our work supporting renters and housing providers continues uninterrupted,” Zillow said.
The Zillow-Redfin lawsuit follows efforts from the Justice Department to crack down on anticompetitive behavior in rental pricing. In 2024, it sued algorithmic pricing software provider RealPage, claiming it enabled landlords to collude to raise rent prices beyond free market levels. RealPage settled in November 2024 after agreeing to limit data collection and cooperate with the agency’s lawsuits against property management companies, but admitted no wrongdoing.
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