Complaint Review: Zillow

The states grant property owners the absolute rights of property possession, control, exclusion, enjoyment, and disposition. Contrary to some perceptions, the real estate industry (brokers, agents, the MLS, websites) has no inherent authority over properties or the markets in which properties are bought and sold. The industry works at the direction of owners. 

In the “exclusive right to sell” contract, the owner is the “obligor”, the broker is the “assignor”, and the MLS and websites are “assignees”. The assignor and assignees are charged with performing contract obligations as they’re described in the contract for as long as the contract is in force. If an assignee assumes obligations set forth in the contract, either expressly or impliedly, they’re liable for any breach of terms in the performance of such obligations.

The assignor is only secondarily liable, but liable nonetheless.

It’s understood that judges, when interpreting contracts, look first and foremost to the parties’ intentions. If it was the owner’s intention to authorize an assignee to work, or use his property information for other commercial endeavors, after the contract terminates, the contract will say so explicitly. Likewise, if the owner intended to “license” or “assign” his “disposition rights” for “no consideration”, the contract will bear such words and phrases. 

Here’s a fair statement. When an assignee compiles and disseminates an owner’s “listing history” serving to devalue his property, hasten its sale, and generate a quick commission for a realtor, while taking fees from that realtor, there’s a problem. No owner would ever authorize that. There’s no service a member of the real estate community could ever provide worth an encumbrance.

The assignees who traffick in listing histories, inclusive of the MLSs and websites, should be called upon to produce documents. For every textual data point contained in a listing history, they should have a photographic copy of a contract evidencing an owner’s consent to a range of activies outside of the scope of selling his property.