Yes I work at Zillow, so yes I'm biased when I tell you about ways to use Zillow to advance your business. But if you'll put aside that obvious bias for a second, here's a suggestion of how you can build your business and help your buying clients via Zillow: look for houses via Make Me Move.

If you don't know about Make Me Move, it's a feature on Zillow that allows homeowners to post the price which would make them hand over the keys, even though their house isn't really for sale. Over 100,000 homeowners have posted Make Me Move prices so far, and our surveys tell us that about 10% of them get pinged by buyers. The average Make Me Move price is about 17% higher than the Zestimate, so typically these aren't crazy prices.

How can you use MMM to your advantage? If you're working with a buyer, remember to look at MMM homes on Zillow. The gem that your buyer has been searching for might be among them.

In my neighborhood of Madison Park Seattle (98112), for example, a search on Zillow shows 155 for sale listings (the red flags) and 197 MMM listings (the blue flags). If you zoom down to my more specific neighborhood, there are at least 10 MMM homes which are reasonably priced and should be in the consideration set of any serious buyer. You can ping the homeowner of a MMM listing through the website (FOR FREE) by email.

We've seen many agents across the country use this tactic for their buyers, but frankly not as many as I'd like or as many as I expected. I think there are three reasons why this hasn't become more standard for buyers agents:

1. Buyside agents think that the MMM homeowners might not be serious sellers so it's not a good use of their time.

While I agree MMM listings probably aren't quite as serious as true listings, these homeowners have nonetheless taken an overt action to enter a price that they say they'd sell for. I think these listings are much more serious than frivolous.

2. Buyside agents are possibly afraid that they won't get paid a commission from the seller.

Many MMM sellers are willing to pay a commission to an agent who brings them a buyer. 91% of MMM sellers answer either "yes" or "maybe" when asked if they'd pay a buyside commission.

3. Buyside agents think that they'll have to do more work because there's no listing agent on the other side.

I think this is a valid fear, but I'd counter with two points. First, remember that about half of MMM sellers say they will still retain a selling agent to get them through to closing. Second, that selling agent could be you! This is a good opportunity to try to double-side the transaction. 

While I'm a big believer in buyside agents trying to offer MMMs to their buying clients, I'd remind you please that it's not cool for sellside agents to ping MMMs to try to get them to list with you. That's spammy.

So the next time you're looking in your MLS for listings for a client, please remember to consider those little blue flags on Zillow. And remember that they're ONLY ON Zillow -- nowhere else.