Zillow paid Redfin $100m to leave the rental listings market, and the most Redfin can be fined for failing to go back in is $1.6m

Nothing in the order takes effect on the day it was filed.

The Federal Trade Commission, joined by the attorneys general of Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, New York and Washington, lodged a 77-page stipulated final order with the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday. It settles the case the Commission brought last September over an agreement Zillow and Redfin signed in February 2025. Every deadline it contains runs from the date the court enters it, and the document on the docket is an attachment to a filing rather than a signed order.

The Commission's account of the 2025 agreement is that Zillow paid Redfin $100m to shut down its internet listing services business, move its rental advertising customers across, repost Zillow's listings instead of selling its own, and stay out of that market for as long as nine years.

Both companies deny the allegations. The order says in terms that it is not evidence against them and not an admission of liability or wrongdoing, and they have waived any right to appeal it.

What Redfin has to do

Within six months of entry, Redfin must be selling rental advertising again.

That means building a working portal that lets customers upload listings across Redfin.com, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com and showing that customers actually use it, standing up a billing system to invoice them, hiring a general manager, a sales team and a fully trained customer support team, and running advertising to bring customers in. It must also keep syndicating Zillow's listings while it does so, which is the mechanism by which it relaunches with more inventory than it had before the 2025 deal.

Zillow, for its part, has to strip out every term that stops Redfin selling advertising or displaying its own customers' listings, and every term requiring Redfin to hand competitively sensitive information back.

It also has to help Redfin raid it. Zillow must provide employee information so Redfin can interview its people, waive noncompete and anti-poaching restrictions on them, and stay out of the way. For two years it may not solicit anyone Redfin employs.

The number the announcement does not carry

The Commission's press release says Redfin "faces monetary penalties" for missing the deadline. Public Appendix F says what they are.

Miss the six-month mark and Redfin pays $1m to the Commission. After that it pays $100,000 for every further month it remains out of compliance, and the total is capped at $1.6m. Once six months of monthly penalties have run, the remedy stops being money and becomes contempt. Redfin can ask for more time for good cause, with the Commission's prior approval.

Set against the $100m the Commission says Zillow paid to make the competition stop, the cap is 1.6 percent of it.

What the public version leaves out

Three of the commitments the press release describes as substantial are not in the public text at all.

How much capital Redfin must put into the business sits in Nonpublic Appendix D. How many salespeople it must hire sits in Nonpublic Appendix E, and the general manager may apply to the Commission to change that number. The date to which Redfin must keep the business running is in Appendix D as well. So the announcement's "millions of dollars" and "multiyear commitment" are the only public form those three terms take.

Two figures are public. The defendants pay the five plaintiff states $2m between them within 30 days of entry, for any lawful purpose including their costs and future monitoring of the order. And the order expires 10 years after entry.

The Commission vote to approve it was 2 to 0.