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Featured Listings on Zillow - Major Change To The Site Starting Today

By Sara Bonert

Services for Real Estate Pros with Zillow

December 15, 2009 01:11 AM

There are two big product changes on Zillow today. The first is the addition of Rentals to the site, which I blogged about here. We are very excited to now have this functionality available to both Agents and home shoppers.

The second change has to do with listings that are manually added to the site, or don't come to Zillow via an automated feed. If you are one of the few who do this, please pay close attention to this post.

Starting today, in order to post a home for sale on Zillow, you can either buy a Featured Listing for $9.95 for 180 days, or if you have 50 or more listings, you can send us a listings feed, for free. Featured Listings are sorted to the top of search results for a particular geography, and receive 6 times more views than non-featured listings -- ensuring that those who are paying us receive extra exposure and extra potential for success on the site. As with all Zillow listings, the agent can still add unlimited photos and a detailed property description.

A big reason we made this change was improve the quality of For Sale listings on Zillow. Specifically, we found that listings manually added to Zillow have a higher occurrence of outdated information, which can lead to a misleading experience for consumers. We believe this change will eradicate much of this outdated information, as there is greater incentive for a paying advertiser to maintain accurate and updated information on their listings.

Currently, only 3% of Zillow's 3.6 million For Sale listings are manually posted (1% are FSBO, and 2% are FSBA) so this change impacts only a very small number of listings. The remaining 97% of our listings come to the site from listings feeds, which will continue to be free.

So as a recap, all manual listings on Zillow are now Featured Listings. It costs $9.95 for 180 days (basically 6 cents a day) and includes:

Featured placement at the top of the search results, generating 6xs more views than a basic listing
"Featured" designation in the search results and on the listing page
Ability to upload unlimited photos
A detailed property description
All contacts will come directly to you

And of course, any Agent who currently sends Zillow listing via a feed also has the option to upgrade to a Featured Listing for this low price!

Post a Featured Listing here.

Zillow Featured Listings and Rental Listings

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Brian Lee Burke

Kenna Real Estate - Lone Tree, CO

Broker & Advising Expert-Kenna Luxury Real Estate

Sara - so I must be one of the few to manually enter the listings :) - I do it because there are so many errors with the feeds!!! And it's easier :) ~Rita

Dec 15, 2009 02:04 AM

Jim & Cathy Wood Greater Nashville Area Real Estate

Crye-Leike Realtors, Inc. - Mount Juliet, TN

Sara- What about reporting? Views , downloads etc?

Dec 15, 2009 02:58 AM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Jim - Good question. Two ways:

Dec 15, 2009 03:01 AM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

(Sorry - hit enter too soon)

Reporting:

1) We always post traffic on the listings itself. Go to the lisitng. Click Home Info in the left hand column. Scroll to the bottom on the page. Here you'll not only see traffic for the posting, but for the zip, city, and state as well.

2) When you create a free account Zillow (whether you have paid listings or they come to us free through a data feed) - you should now be receiving periodic traffic report right to your inbox. We just started doing this about two months ago.

Dec 15, 2009 03:08 AM

Douglas Fischer

East Oahu Realty - Selling Honolulu, Hawaii Condos - Honolulu, HI

So many options. So many choices. But, I like what I see and think it looks like a great value.

Dec 15, 2009 06:54 AM

Douglas Fischer

East Oahu Realty - Selling Honolulu, Hawaii Condos - Honolulu, HI

So many options. So many choices. But, I like what I see and think it looks like a great value.

Dec 15, 2009 06:54 AM

James K Barath, CMPS

Canopy Mortgage, LLC - Crown Point, IN

FICO Pro, Certified Military Housing Specialist

This is great for the big markets where Zillow is well established. Curious to see how many Realtors this new service will attract or run off. Either way, it will be highly beneficial for those who commit.

Dec 15, 2009 09:55 AM

Christine Bohn

RE/MAX Professionals - Gainesville, FL

The Bohn Team, Gainesville FL

Well, I don't have 50 listings. I have manually loaded my listings. But, to have to pay for each listing now might be a strain on someone's advertising/listing budget. So, I am not sure if I will do this yet. Does your company have any influence directly with large franchises such as REMAX to get a direct feed from them? Just curious.

Dec 16, 2009 06:54 AM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Christine - We actually take a feed from just about every other national franchise, except RE/MAX and Exit - but we would love to! Feel free to send them my way! :) Since we don't get a feed from your particular Franchise, there are other services you can use for syndication. For example, I believe your MLS works with ListHub.

Dec 16, 2009 07:08 AM

Anonymous

DIYer

Suprise, suprise....zillow's cutting out the DIYer....I heard that pretty soon you'll be charging a referral fee for all the leads...ouch.

Dec 16, 2009 09:46 PM

#12

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

DIYer - Not sure where you heard we'll be charging for referrals (not on this blog!), but that isn't true. I do hope spending $10 to have featured advertising on the second most trafficked real estate site ofr 6 months wouldn't cut anyone out.

Dec 17, 2009 12:18 AM

Lee & Pamela St. Peter

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices YSU Realty: (919) 645-2522 - Raleigh, NC

Making Connections to Success in Real Estate

Sara, what am I missing here? If you get feeds (from Prudential say) then we won't be charged and our listings will show up? BUT if we were manually adding these listings we will have to now pay? What about Postlets and vFlyers?

Dec 17, 2009 02:05 AM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Lee and Pamela - You got it. Because we get your listings from Prudential (or Postlet or vFLyer or any other of our 300+ feeds) this change means nothing to you.

(unless you want to pay $9.95 for 180 days to have your listing Featured)

Dec 17, 2009 02:09 AM

Annie & Bob Pacieznik

REMAX - Edina, MN

Sarah, I'm one of the 2% agents who inputted their own listings...I also had the option of my listings showing up through realestatebook.com but always felt that I did a better job by inputing on my own...but now with this change, if I have realestatebook.com submit my listings for me, will I still have access to the listings (adding text, photos, open house info)?

Thanks for the help.

Dec 17, 2009 12:04 PM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Annie and Bob- Yes, you will. The key is to make sure the email address on your Zillow profile matches the email address The Real Estate Book has on file for you. This is how we know to tie the two together. Also, you could double check if your MLS has a relationship with ListHub, I think they might?

Dec 17, 2009 12:35 PM

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

and... keep in mind that if you do decide to pay the $9.95 for 180 day (basically $1.67 a month for 6 months) your listing will now be Featured - meaning it sorts to the top of search results and to get more traffic. Before this change, we used to charge $10/listing per month for this product, so it costs now considerably less.

Dec 17, 2009 12:38 PM

Maureen McCabe

HER Realtors - Columbus, OH

Columbus Ohio Real Estate

Thanks for the answer on Twitter. Not sure how I missed this. I read your post about rentals and missed this completely.

Jan 03, 2010 10:21 AM

Elizabeth Weintraub Sacramento Broker

Elizabeth Anne Weintraub, Broker - Sacramento, CA

Put 40 years of experience to work for you

Another really nice feature is if you are an advertiser on Zillow, there is no charge to post your listings on Zillow. I just found that a few weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised.

Jan 04, 2010 06:29 AM

Anonymous

Veronique Schejtman

Why is the chrage $39.95 when I clcik through the link to post a featured lisitng? Everywhere else the charge is stated as $9.95 or about 6 cents a day?

May 05, 2011 02:40 AM

#21

Sara Bonert

Zillow - Atlanta, GA

Real Estate Internet Marketing

Veronique - Rentals are $9.95 and For Sale are $39.95. If you post through either of these ways on Zillow, the listing will indeed be featured. However, if you are just trying to get it on the site and don't care if it is featured, then may I recommend posting it on Postlets and it will be syndicated to us for no charge.

May 05, 2011 02:51 AM