HousingWireHousingWire
Redfin has not been shy about generating headlines in 2025. Much of the attention has been focused on the deal with Rocket, but that’s not necessarily the deal federal regulators have their eye on.
According to an article published by The Capitol Forum late last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Redfin’s deal with Zillow to make Zillow the exclusive provider of multifamily listings on Redfin, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.
Sources familiar with the situation told the publication that the FTC has launched an investigation into whether Zillow’s agreement to take over Redfin’s multifamily rental listing network is equivalent to a merger that has had an anticompetitive impact on apartment property managers.
According to the Capitol Forum, staff from the Mergers III unit of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition has reached out to property managers to discuss the partnership between Zillow and Redfin.
The FTC had previously sued to block CoStar Group’s purchase of RentPath Holdings, which includes Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com, in 2020. RentPath was later acquired by Redfin in April 2021 for $608 million.
The Zillow-Redfin multifamily rentals syndication deal was completed for an upfront payment of $100 million, which falls below the $126.4 million threshold for reporting mergers to U.S. antitrust agencies.
According to an anonymous property management executive quoted in the Capitol Forum article, the Zillow-Redfin agreement has been “horrible” and it has forced his company to redo its rental advertising budget.
The source told Capitol Forum that after the syndication agreement closed, Zillow pressured him and his company to accept a contract that included fewer services than it had received when listing apartments on Rent.com. He also claimed that if he and his firm did not agree to the terms of the contract, Zillow threatened to take all of its properties off of the site.
Both Zillow and the FTC did not wish to comment on this news. As of May 6, 2025, no investigation notice has been posted on the FTC website.
