There are two major changes starting today on Zillow that all of you need to be aware of, so let’s get started...

You will no longer be able to manually add listings to Zillow for free.  If you choose to buy a featured listing, you will be charged $9.95 for the post to be live for 180 days.  From now on, if you choose to post on Zillow, you must do so through a listing feed unless you want to pay the price.  The $9.95 will allow your manually added listing to be featured, giving it much more exposure at the top of the search results.

Let us be clear, if your listings are already feeding automatically to Zillow, this change will not affect you. 

Now for some great news.  The second change is the addition of rentals to Zillow.  Landlords can now advertise their lease properties on the site that used to be strictly for for sale homes. The rentals will be featured rental listings, with unlimited photo uploading as well as searchable by monthly payment.  Of course, the same charge will apply if you choose to list your rentals - $9.95 for 180 days.  If you choose to use Zillow to advertise your rental properties, keep in mind its medium.  It’s main focus is home buyers, so before you choose to use this feature, consider your audience. 

RealSupport has always recommended manually adding listings to our clients because of the challenges that come with automatic feeds.  (Lack of information feeding, etc.) However, we have noticed improvements recently with automatic feeds and hope that this new change further encourages improvements. 

With this change, also comes a new benefit to automatic feeds - you no longer have to renew your ads.  Now, they will automatically re-feed through.  No more monthly zillow checkups to make sure your listings don’t expire!  Time is money so anytime you can cut down on time, it’s a good thing.

Sometimes taking away from one medium, just means finding another, more innovative marketing tactic to use.  Please contact us if you have any questions.  We’re here to help.