A new opinion piece by Charles Sauer in the The Washington Times takes a hard look at Zillow’s sudden embrace of “pre-market” listings—and finds something familiar.
What Zillow is now branding as “Zillow Preview” isn’t new. It’s the same phased marketing strategy—often called private or “coming soon” listings—that the company criticized just weeks ago when competitors began offering it more broadly.
As Sauer explains, the shift isn’t about innovation. It’s about catching up to a market that moved without Zillow.
“Zillow is changing direction alongside a moving market, no longer resisting the change sellers have been demanding, and is now trying to promote it as anything but the about-face it is.”
For months, private listings were framed as a threat to transparency and fairness. But now that Zillow is participating, the narrative has changed.
“Zillow previously banned private listings from its platform… By now stating that Zillow Preview follows local MLS rules, this announcement should be read as an acknowledgment that the Compass-Redfin deal had been compliant from the start.”
That reversal raises an obvious question: if the practice is compliant and beneficial today, why was it treated as dangerous yesterday?
Sauer argues the answer lies less in consumer protection—and more in control.
“Zillow’s attack pieces… demonstrate that organized real estate, with Zillow at the forefront, was the gatekeeper of change and innovation. It was threatening agents and sellers with exclusion if they refused to follow a predetermined path for listing a house.”
At its core, this debate has always been about who gets to decide how homes are marketed—and who benefits from that control.
The reality is that sellers have been asking for more flexibility all along. Phased marketing strategies allow homeowners to test pricing, generate early demand, and avoid costly mispricing mistakes.
“Giving agents and sellers the opportunity to receive real-time feedback and avoid pricing errors that can cost a seller tens of thousands of dollars has always made sense.”
Now, even Zillow acknowledges that demand.
“When sellers choose to market their property to the public before it officially hits the market, it can create energy and demand around their listing.”
The implications go beyond individual transactions. Expanded listing strategies could help address one of the biggest challenges in today’s housing market: limited inventory.
“Housing inventory could increase by 6%-12% when a phased marketing strategy is available.”
That’s a meaningful shift—and one that suggests the earlier backlash against private listings may have been misplaced.
Sauer closes with a blunt assessment of what drove the controversy in the first place:
“It is fair to say that much of the sound and fury was never about protecting consumers… It was about protecting revenue streams.”
Zillow’s reversal doesn’t just validate phased marketing strategies. It highlights a broader truth: when markets evolve, attempts to control them rarely last.
And in the end, consumer choice tends to win out.
Read more at Washington Times by clicking here.
