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Each week on The Download, Inman’s Christy Murdock takes a deeper look at the top-read stories of the week to give you what you’ll need to meet Monday head-on. This week: Amid private listing debates and portal wars, agents should be asking one question: How does my business benefit from the outcome?

Whether you’re signing with a brokerage or choosing a portal as a source of paid leads, your business is, well, the whole point. How will the branding, marketing and decisions they make impact you and your business?

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As the battle between Compass and Zillow heats up this week, and amid the ongoing controversies surrounding private listings, Clear Cooperation and the portal wars, agents are asking themselves whether they’re going to come out a winner or be left behind when the dust settles.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, Compass sued Zillow over its new rules banning privately marketed listings from the platform. The suit alleges that Zillow employed “anticompetitive tactics to protect its monopoly and revenues in violation of the antitrust laws.”

The lawsuit escalates tensions between industry-leading Zillow, the country’s largest portal, and Compass, the No. 1 brokerage by sales volume.

READ: Sanford fires back at Compass, argues against ‘walled gardens’

“This lawsuit is about protecting consumer choice. No one company should have the power to ban agents or listings simply because they don’t follow that company’s business model,” Compass CEO Robert Reffkin said in a statement. “That’s not competition. It’s coercion. Imagine if Amazon banned a seller for offering a product on their own website first. That’s what Zillow is doing in real estate. Consumers should have the right to choose how they sell their homes.”

In its response, Zillow said, “At the heart of this issue is a simple principle: when a listing is publicly marketed, it should be accessible to all buyers — across all platforms, including Zillow. Hiding listings creates a fragmented market, limits consumer choice and creates barriers to homeownership, which is bad for buyers, sellers, and the industry at large, especially in this inventory and affordability-constrained environment.”

READ: Compass asks judge to block Zillow’s ban on publicly marketed private listings

Depending on which side you believe, everyone involved says they’re standing up for agents and their businesses. So how can you ensure that you’re standing up for your own best interests as well? By staying as informed as possible and understanding your numbers — both in your business and in the market at large.

This week, Inman contributors talked about both sides of the Compass/Zillow fight and Windermere’s Jeff Tucker looked at some rare good news from the spring market.

Is Zillow skating dangerously close to thin ice?

Team leader Carl Medford writes that Zillow’s brokerage license and algorithmic pricing suggestions could be setting it up for a legal showdown that threatens its entire business model.

Compass’ antitrust gamble could shatter Zillow’s empire

Broker and attorney Greg Hague writes that the Compass vs. Zillow lawsuit will ultimately democratize real estate tech, empower innovation and put consumers back in control.

Amid a fairly flat market, May held some nice surprises: Economist

Windermere Economist Jeff Tucker looks at recent economic indicators, including some surprising upside despite a disappointing spring market.

Real estate is changing fast, and so must you. Inman Connect San Diego is where you turn uncertainty into strategy — with real talk, real tools and the connections that matter. If you’re serious about staying ahead of the game, this is where you need to be. Register now!

The Trump administration lifted “a pile of regulations” from FHA lenders Friday afternoon, eliminating a dozen policies governing flood risk management, inspections in disaster areas, appraisals, underwriter qualification and data collection.

The move is aimed at “slashing red tape that drives up costs and shuts families out of the market,” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner said in an announcement.

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The policy recissions, published in a series of Mortgagee Letters, are effective immediately and will be incorporated into a future version of the Federal Housing Administration’s Single Family Housing Policy Handbook for lenders.

Builders constructing new homes in special flood hazard areas or FEMA-designated “coastal high hazard areas” will no longer be required to build homes at least two feet above the base flood elevation for their homes to qualify for FHA financing.

The new elevation standard, announced in November by the Biden administration, “would have limited the land available for development and increased the cost of construction for FHA-insured single family properties, thereby contributing to the insufficient supply of New Construction housing and rising home prices,” HUD said in rescinding it.

Lenders signing off on FHA loans in Presidentially Declared Major Disaster Areas (PDMDAs) will no longer be required to obtain mandatory damage inspection reports that identify and quantify any dwelling damage.

Instead, they “must exercise reasonable due diligence to determine if additional inspections or repairs are necessary,” HUD said.

Requiring inspections by FHA-approved appraisers in disaster areas regardless of whether any damage had occurred, “sometimes resulted in a lengthy waiting period” for mortgage approvals, and led to “unnecessary inspections, delayed loan closings, and postponed issuance of FHA insurance,” HUD maintains.

In scaling back the several requirements for appraisers, HUD said FHA “has historically imposed more extensive property appraisal protocols and more stringent procedures than those required for other mortgage lending purposes.”

Appraisers will no longer be required to confirm that the remaining economic life of a property is longer than the mortgage term. Fewer photos of properties will be required — they won’t be required to take photos of attics or crawl spaces, for example.

When analyzing the housing market in which a property is located, appraisers will still be required to determine if property values are increasing, stable or declining, but won’t have to assess whether the current trend appears to be changing.

“Current appraisal standards no longer support the need for certain FHA-specific protocols, rendering them outdated and misaligned with broader industry norms,” HUD said. “In addition, FHA’s internal collateral valuation technology and data capabilities have significantly improved, further reducing the necessity of these duplicative and antiquated appraisal requirements.”

HUD is also lowering the experience requirements for “Direct Endorsement” underwriters who have the authority to sign off on loans without prior FHA review or approval, and allowing lenders to employ them on a part-time basis.

“FHA recognizes that the financial landscape for smaller lending institutions has evolved significantly over the past decade, presenting both opportunities and challenges in sustaining growth and meeting customer needs,” HUD said of the change.

In eliminating a requirement that lenders collect information about the borrower’s language preference and any homeownership education and housing counseling they may have received, HUD said only 1.2 percent of FHA borrowers completed the form “in a manner that provided any potential benefit to them.”

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Real estate is changing fast, and so must you. Inman Connect San Diego is where you turn uncertainty into strategy — with real talk, real tools and the connections that matter. If you’re serious about staying ahead of the game, this is where you need to be. Register now!

Uncertainty over what tariffs the Trump administration will ultimately impose on U.S. trading partners continues to weigh on consumer confidence, according to two closely watched surveys.

The latest reading from the University of Michigan surveys of consumers released Friday showed consumer sentiment improved for the first time in six months in June, rising 16 percent from May.

University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment

But at 60.7 in June, the U of M Index of sentiment was down 18 percent from December 2024, and “consumer views are still broadly consistent with an economic slowdown and an increase in inflation to come,” survey director Joanne Hsu said in a statement.

Joanne Hsu

“Consumers continue to be concerned about the potential impact of tariffs, but at this time they do not appear to be connecting developments in the Middle East with the economy,” Hsu said.

While rising tensions with Iran initially sent oil prices up by 20 percent in June, they’ve since retreated after attacks on Iran by Israel and the U.S. did not escalate into an all-out war.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, released on June 24, retreated by 5.4 points in June, to 93. That index had previously posted its first gain in five months in May, rising 12.3 points.

Stephanie Guichard

“Tariffs remained on top of consumers’ minds and were frequently associated with concerns about their negative impacts on the economy and prices,” Conference Board Senior Economist Stephanie Guichard said in a statement. “Inflation and high prices were another important concern cited by consumers in June.”

Conference Board Present Situation and Expectations Indexes

The Conference Board’s Expectations Index, which is based on consumers’ outlook for income, business and labor market conditions, fell 4.6 points to 69, well below the threshold of 80 that often signals a recession ahead.

While many economists expect tariffs will have an inflationary impact on prices, they could also cause the economy to slow if consumers buy less and hiring slows.

Federal Reserve policymakers have signalled that while they expect to cut short-term interest rates twice later this year to keep unemployment in check, they’ve been waiting to see what impact tariffs have on prices.

The latest reading of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, showed consumer spending shrank by $29.3 billion in May, and that the annual rate of inflation moved away from the Fed’s 2 percent goal, to 2.3 percent.

Ongoing negotiations have added to the uncertainty over tariffs, with the Trump administration pushing back many country-specific “reciprocal tariffs,” which were originally slated to go into effect in April, until July 9.

U.S. stock indexes hit new all-time records on Friday on news that the U.S. and China are close to reaching a trade deal, only to reverse course when President Trump said he was ending trade talks with Canada.

In the meantime, consumers are paying an average effective tariff rate of 15.8 percent on imported goods — the highest since 1936, according to a June 17 analysis by The Budget Lab at Yale.

Get Inman’s Mortgage Brief Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.

Email Matt Carter