It appears that the highly contested divorce of the Zillow Group (Z) and Move isn’t quite over yet.
April 7 was supposed to be the day that all real estate listings provided to Zillow and Trulia by Move-owned ListHub would disappear, unless Zillow Group had consent from the listings supplier to keep the listing on Zillow.
But now that April 7 has come and gone, the ListHub listings still appear on Zillow Group’s websites and ListHub is accusing Zillow of not honoring the terms of their agreement.
ListHub made the accusation in a letter sent Wednesday to its customers. In the letter, which was obtained by HousingWire, ListHub Vice President and General Manager Celeste Starchild says that Zillow is “still allowing the widespread presentation of outdated listing data that should have been removed from its website and mobile apps on April 7.”
Starchild goes on to say that Zillow’s continued use of the ListHub listing data means that "your intellectual property could be being used by a third party without license, and is not being updated to maintain accuracy.”
The accuracy of listing data has long been an issue for online real estate websites, and Starchild suggests that Zillow’s slow response is impacting the agents whose listings appear on the Zillow Group’s sites.
“Inaccurate listings not only undermine the efforts of brokers and agents, they’re also a major cause of friction in the real estate lifecycle and they mislead consumers,” Starchild said in the letter.
“Allowing listing content to become stale and inaccurate is out of step with the values that we share as an industry,” Starchild continued. “We are compelled to notify our customers so that you're aware of Zillow's apparent disregard for the accuracy of its data and the interests of brokers, agents and consumers.”
Starchild says that ListHub informed Zillow of its complaint, adding that Zillow has been “unresponsive” thus far.
The actual contractually designated date of the data removal appears to be an issue. In a statement to HousingWire, Zillow said that it plans to have the ListHub data removed by the end of the day Wednesday.
“We are abiding by the terms of our contract, which requires affected listings to be removed from Zillow one day after it terminated on April 7,” Zillow spokesperson Katie Curnutte said in a statement.
Move reiterated its view in a subsequent statement to HousingWire.
“We disagree with their position,” Move said in a statement. “The ListHub content should have come down end of business April 7.”
