WHAT DOES ZILLOW THINK IT'S DOING???

My client sent me an urgent email saying that the first thing tomorrow, they want to see this house that just came on the market - on Zillow. It's exactly what they've been looking for. They included the address.

If it just went on the market, then it must have been a few hours ago after the last time I checked the mls. So, I dutifully responded that I would check it out and make an appointment.

I went to the mls, and the home is not Active. It's a home I'm familiar with because I live in the area, and had sold the home to another buyer in 2011, but the buyer walked after the inspection. The home finally sold in February, 2012.

Since it wasn't showing on the mls, I telephoned my client to get more information from them. They said they had driven by the home, so I asked if there is a sign in the yard. "No, there is no sign," they said.

"Well, you are aware that Zillow keeps homes on their site long after they close."

"Yes, we're aware of that, but it says Days on Zillow (1), so we figured it was a new listing."

I went back to the mls to double check. Did I miss it? If it had been on Zillow for only (1) day, then Zillow must have just gotten it from the mls.

Or did they?

I checked the house description on Zillow and compared it with the house description on the Februay, 2012 closed listing. Sure enough, the description was the same.

This morning I checked the mls listings again. The home is not Active. I drove over to the home, and there is no sign in the yard. I went back to the Zillow site, and this morning it shows the Days on Zillow (2), which confirms that Zillow had just put that home on their site two days ago - one year after the home had sold.

Apparently, the low national housing inventory has affected Zillow so that they have a lower number of pages in which to get paid advertising from agents paying for ads to attract buyer leads. It appears that Zillow may have come up with the disengenious idea that if they place homes back on Zillow that have been closed long ago, that they could build more pages for advertising to gullible buyers who don't understand that Zillow is not the place to search for a home to buy.

Personally, I think it's outrageous. That deceptive advertising practice wastes the time of everyone concerned. It cost about one hour of my time, an hour of my client's time, and it will cost about 20 minutes of the time of each of the three Zillow premier agents that I contacted about the property.

You can see the listing on Zillow.

What can be done to stop this egregious practice?

UPDATE:

I searched the listing more, and found this at the bottom of the listing:

Listing provided by

Contact Office, Congress Realty, (888) 229-2009, source: VLS Homes

Report problem with listing

So I reported the problem.

Since the "Listing provided by" information is hidden at the bottom, and almost never seen by a consumer, then it was, in my opinion, a Zillow premier agent hoping to increase his/her odds of getting a call from a buyer. 

Isn't Zillow bad enough, with their outdated listings, without having Realtors contribute to the problem by the practice of putting up listings that were sold one year ago?

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