-“What do you know about Zillow? Shall I advertise with them?”, My agent asked when in the office.
-“I just came from a training and the guy said Zillow is the way to go but you must have a great website.”, he continued.
Of course the training was selling this guy’s websites. I despise this new tendency to camouflage sales under training.
But back to point, I see Zillow did a good job putting together all the information consumers want to see about properties but for agents it is far from ideal.
Then I told my agent my experience.
“When I started in real estate, I didn’t know any better and I did some advertising on Zillow.”
Sales guy told me:
-“You pay $300/month and get the leads from a zip code”
He forgot to mention a few things… such as all calls and emails were sent to 3 different agents, that I get only a small percentage of the impressions, I was stuck on a 12-month contract and there was no guarantee I would get any leads.
On most of the calls I received, consumers told me:
-“We have an agent, we just want to see this house and continuing working with our agent.”
Either he was busy or Zillow lead them to believe them they were contacting the listing agent.
That was the first time I realized Zillow is attracting the consumers and using the agents to fund their demise.
In 2 years I paid Zillow I barely recover the money I paid them.
But…. there is always a but…
You should not discard Zillow. Your clients are going to go there anyway whatever you tell them and regardless how good is your website.
-“What shall I do then?”, he asked.
Work on your client’s trust.
Your services go way above finding the property. That is the easy part.
Once you get the property you need to negotiate prices, inspections, make sure all the documentation is in order, manage title company, inspectors, appraisers, surveyors, other incompetent agents and so on.
But on Zillow there are still things to do:
Pay them the $10 a month for premier agent and every time you close a transaction, make sure your client’s leave a review on Zillow.