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Zillow's RESPA Fight Isn't Your Green Light

September 22, 2026

Zillow is asking a court to throw out a RESPA and WCPA case for good, arguing the plaintiffs still haven't pleaded their claims correctly even after getting a second shot in July. This is not new news about your industry. This is old news about your industry finally showing up in a courtroom.

RESPA is a real-estate-transaction law, and Zillow's case is about home sale referrals, not apartment leasing. But the underlying question, whether paying a portal to move you up in results is functionally a referral fee, is the same question multifamily operators should be asking about their own ILS agreements. Zillow winning a dismissal on pleading technicalities doesn't answer that question. It just means these particular plaintiffs asked it badly.

Here's what that means for you: don't wait for a final ruling to know whether your contract is fine. Rulings on procedure aren't rulings on the merits, and "the case got dismissed" is not the same sentence as "the practice is legal." If your legal team hasn't already read your top three ILS contracts with fresh eyes on how leads are ranked, boosted, and priced, now is a good time, while this is still a live fight instead of a closed one.

Nobody is telling you to cancel Zillow tomorrow. But "we'll deal with it if it becomes a problem" is not a strategy when the problem is a legal theory currently being tested in federal court. Get ahead of the question your general counsel is eventually going to ask anyway.

Source: HousingWire, September 22, 2026