A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what's the cash value of one that's been illegally borrowed to sell a home? A lawsuit filed by CoStar Group (CoStar) in the Southern District of New York on July 30, 2025, is attempting to determine the exact amount and extract it from rival Zillow.
Alleging that Zillow has used close to 47,000 photographs taken by CoStar photographers for online listings without permission, CoStar's suit claims copyright infringement between two of the biggest players in the real estate field. Their stance is bolstered by previous success with a similar suit and their watermark being present on many of the images used by Zillow.
Real estate sales have been dragging in many markets, hampered by high mortgage interest rates and prices that prospective buyers can't afford. The impending legal battle between the established industry leader and its fast-growing rival, which also involves the rental market, may well reshape the real estate world going forward.
A Cozy Fixer-Upper With Good Bones
Incorporated in 2004, Zillow's online real estate website went live in 2006 and promptly crashed due to overwhelming traffic. After expanding services (and user capacity), Zillow added homes for sale on the site later that year. Profitable by 2010, Zillow went public in 2011 and began acquiring other online real estate market companies.
With the 2015 purchase of competitor Trulia for $2.5 billion, Zillow was involved in 70% of all online real estate searches that year. By 2023, they had over 160 million properties listed online and had expanded into the rental market and mortgages.
CoStar began in 1987 and was first active in the commercial real estate sector. As the company grew, it too began purchasing online real estate markets, although its early focus was on rental properties like Apartments.com. This changed with the 2021 acquisition of Homes.com, a direct competitor of Zillow in the residential real estate market.
Both companies offer real estate information, online marketplaces, and analytics for real estate transactions. Supplanting real estate listings in the classified section of newspapers, Zillow and CoStar specialize in providing virtual tours of homes and properties that are either for sale or for rent. Almost all listings include dozens of photos, and many have video available as well.
As pointed out by CoStar's lawsuit, those pictures don't just magically appear. Presenting a house in its best light requires quality pictures from professional photographers. CoStar alleges that the photos taken by their employees were poached by Zillow and used in competing listings of the same property.
CoStar also accuses Zillow of giving Realtor.com and Redfin access to the pictures through a syndication agreement. The other two companies are not named as defendants in the suit, but CoStar has warned that they'll be sued as well unless they remove the images immediately.
This Is Not Their First Legal Rodeo
This is not the first time CoStar has waged a legal battle over its pictures being borrowed without permission. In 2019, the company won a $500 million settlement from Xceligent, a company accused of stealing CoStar's intellectual property under copyright law. With Xceligent out of business by then, CoStar accepted $10.7 million from the defunct company's insurers.
In a different case, CoStar instead finds itself behind the defendant's table after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of antitrust claims against the company on June 23, 2025. It's also facing a proposed consumer class action suit in several stages that alleges CoStar conspired with several hotel chains to inflate hotel room prices.
Zillow has additional legal headaches as well. It's being sued by Compass, another online home-selling entity, over its policy of permanently banning homes that weren't placed on Zillow within 24 hours of being listed as for sale. While CoStar didn't specify the amount it was seeking in damages from Zillow, the number of stolen images is roughly the same as those involved in the Xceligent ruling.
Related Resources
- National Association of Realtors Heading to Court Again (FindLaw's Law and Daily Life)
- Home Selling Legal Basics (FindLaw's Selling Your Home)
- Photographer Sues "Zillow Gone Wild" for Copying Pictures (FindLaw's Legally Weird)
