This morning while doing some market research for a client I received a phone call from Zillow.  These calls come in from time to time when some other agent decides to stop paying Zillow for some advertising product.  Today it was that zip code 98312 became available for purchase.  My office is in 98312 and I live in 98312 so you would think I would “jump” at the chance to purchase a spot on the Zillow website for zip code 98312. Nope, I politely declined.  Then I started to wonder, why was the other agent giving up the spot in 98312?  Probably because the return on investment just wasn’t what they thought it would be.  I very rarely pay for ads and at the moment I am not paying for any advertisement on Zillow or Trulia.  I don’t think I have ever paid for advertising on Zillow.  If I have it would have been years and years ago.  I know I have never paid for a zip code.

This phone call got me to thinking.  What does that zip code 98312 look like.  I went to Zillow and put in zip code 98312.  There were 42 homes listed for sale. Forty-two homes for sale?  I knew something was a miss.  You see the Northwest Multiple Listing Service which all real estate brokers in the area belong to does NOT syndicated listings to these 3rd party sites.  So Zillow would not be getting the homes that are listed through the MLS to them.  We as companies or individual brokers can enter our listings on Zillow and HOMEFRONT Realty does. However, there are a bunch of other real estate agents/brokers that do NOT.

If you were a buyer in the 98312 zip code of Bremerton and you were searching on Zillow you would have MISSED 113 homes for sale! That number again is 1 1 3!!!  Crazy!  If you were searching for homes on HOMEFRONT Realty you would have seen ALL 113 homes that are available along with some pending homes, homes that are NOT sold but not in a total active status.  Most of these homes will sell, but some will be back on the market, so always nice to see that data too.

I guess I was shocked to see that Buyers using Zillow to search for their home would miss out on 72% of the homes available in Bremerton’s 98312!

Buyers do your self a service and search on a Company website – we are the ones that have ALL of the listings.  Don’t miss out on your dream home!