A Realtor's Guide to "Farming" Zillow.com

Brian, I like your ideas and I intend to follow thru with your ideas.

Brian,

When it comes to Zillow, I don't even read past the first two sentences anymore.  Two more sites came out last week with the same concept and two more will come out next month.  In the age of Technology, Zillow has come and gone.  $57 Million invested by Venture Capitalists into something not too hard to duplicate sounds like a bad investment to me and obviously, there are some changes to try to salvage a $57 million dollar investment.

I don't know, personally if I had $57 Million to invest, I could come up with something better... like investing in actual real estate!

Brian,

Awesome blog, I will keep an eye on this one, this is a monster, it has a lot of advertising. thanks for sharing that with us

 

These on-line entities are not going away they are multiplying.  You can chose to utilize them to build your internet presence or you can complain.

I left this question on the Zillow blog, but I will post it here, too... in case you know the answer, Brian, or in case Dave from Zillow is reading.

Ok.  We post all of our listings on Zillow.  If someone enters a question on one of our listings, will we receive an automatic email?  If not, we are going to have to check all of our listings on Zillow several times a day to be sure we don't miss something.  With the number of listings we carry, that could be a full time job.

Also, will a listing agent have the ability to delete inappropriate comments or questions?  I could see some of our local "free-thinkers" feeling compelled to post something like "This place is a P.O.S.!"  :-)

 

Edit:  Well, duh.  I just needed to read further down in Zillow's FAQ: 

Is there a way for me to be notified if someone posts a question on my home?

Yes. If you are the homeowner and have claimed your home, you will be notified by e-mail when someone asks a question about your home. Since these are automatically-generated e-mails, you cannot opt out of receiving these e-mails.

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Someone posted a negative remark on my house. What can I do?

You can add your point of view for everyone to see. If you have claimed ownership of the home, any question or answer you write about your home will indicate that you are the owner. But if someone has written something that is inaccurate or malicious, please click the "Flag content" link under the question or answer, and Zillow Customer Support will review it. If it is off-topic or violates our Good Neighbor Policy, it will be removed.

But ... the first answer says if I am the "homeowner".... so maybe my question still stands?  Will the agent receive email notice of a pending question?

Brian, I just don't know where this is going to lead to. Fortunately in my market most folks don't have a clue what Zillow is. I've been asking my sellers about it for months and not one has a clue about Zillow except for maybe hearing the name. So we'll see.

In my market in Southern California almost everyone knows about Zillow.  Buyers use it to look upthe price on a home they are considering.  When I go to listing appointments the owners already have their zillow estimate printed out. It makes it very difficult when the Zillow estimate does not reflect what the property is worth using the conventional CMA approach.

Brian, an excellent blog.  Keep informing us of the Zillow changes and how we can cope with them.

Hey Mr Brady. I spent a lot of time on their site today. Some of it seems to be a bit glitchy but then they just reconfigured a lot.  I put my little toe in the water there, we'll see how it goes before I plunge in wholeheartedly. There has been a lot of discussion on Jonathan's blog today about MLS rules and whose listing you can 'advertise'.  I'm going to say what I said there: until you know for sure you are meeting your individual state guidelines, it's easy to just advertise your own listings. It's not against the law however to go in and comment on any house you have seen in your area's inventory.  So that would be the approach I would take. Any thoughts?

As for the q and a section. Thousands of homes. Not as easy a thing to do as it is on Localism. Maybe they will tweak it but even narrowing it down to zipcodes it's cumbersome right now.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts my friend :-)

Unfortunately, I think Michigan is way down on the list as far as Zillow is concerned.  Last time I checked, you can't hardly get information on anything.  They will have a heckuva time getting any advertising dollars in my neck of the woods unless they start offering some useful information.

For anyone with my same question .... David G answered it over on the Zillow Blog:

• CJ --
• Good question. As the listing agent, if you posted the listing on Zillow, you will receive an e-mail notification each time someone contributes to Q&A on the home. If your seller has claimed their home, they will also receive an e-mail.

I feel much better now.  I would not have wanted questions posted on our listings to get missed and go unanswered -- or worse yet, have some loose mangy mutt peeing on my trees.  :-)  (You need to read the coverage at Bloodhound to understand that metaphor)