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Zillow wants your listings.

By David Gibbons

Services for Real Estate Pros with Zillow.com

December 06, 2006 06:25 PM

Hi, it's David G from Zillow.com. If you think you've read that somewhere before, it could be that I've commented on one of your blog posts on behalf of Zillow where I'm the Director of Customer Service. This is my first post at ActiveRain. Hi! Tonight, we're taking our next big step at Zillow.com and I want to fill you in as well as get your feedback.

You can now post your listings for sale on Zillow.com -- it's free for listing agents and sellers to market their homes on Zillow. As Zillow President Lloyd Frink says on our blog, "We're opening it up". To quote our CEO, Rich Barton, the new offerings allow homeowners or real estate agents "to plant virtual 'For Sale' signs in their Zillow front yards for free." As a listing agent, you can promote your listings along side your contact details with a link to your website, blog or even the home's virtual tour. Did I mention it's free?

This may be the first version of our website that includes homes for sale but we've put a lot of thought and effort into the posting tool, and the image uploads and we've rebuilt search to accommodate for sale homes and added more intuitive filtering of search results. Now, when you post your listing on Zillow, buyers will see your price and not the Zestimate in their search results on the Zillow map. On the home's details page, the sale price is also most prominently displayed.

With this launch, which was internally dubbed "Z4", we've added a wiki -- the real estate wiki. It's loaded with articles from Choosing a Lender to Owning vs Renting a Home but you're the experts, so please get involved and add your opinion or experiences to a wiki article on Zillow. Or, maybe just correct an article. I hope this will become a well used reference for homeowners and a place for professionals to document best practice. You'll even find a wiki article called Realtor com - Agent Marketing Opportunities. You definitely know more about these topics than we do, so please, consider contributing to the real estate wiki.

Lastly, we've also added the ability for owners who don't plan to sell their homes to post a price on their home that would make them reconsider -- we call this feature Make Me Move (TM). I personally can't wait to see what homeowners do with it.

OK, that's enough from me for now. Please go and try to post your listings on Zillow and let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your feedback. Once you've kicked the tires on our new features, let me know in the comments below this post.

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David Gibbons

Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Thanks for your comments and encouragement. I will try to answer all of the questions raised here but it may take me a while -- we're a bit swamped today.

Maureen -

Agreed on Kevin's blog -- he's one of the most insightful bloggers in our industry. And yeah, I'm also a HUGE fan of what Matt and the team has achieved here.

Leigh -

Make Me Move owners are not sellers -- they're the opposite -- they don't plan to sell but could be tempted for the right price. It's a largely whimsical feature and we're not sure yet how owners will use it but we're certain it will get a discussion started about homes that aren't even listed -- we think that new inventory could be kind of interesting.

Ben -

Thanks for the feedback. The photo upload speed seems to be IE specific. We're working on it. I've asked our Network Engineers to chime in here & answer your question regarding infrastructure -- but they're swamped so I cant guarantee that they'll get to it. THANKS for posting your home!

MaryAnn -

Thank you for kicking the tyres. I'm so glad you found it simple to post your listings -- that was our first priority in this feature.

Christine -

I'm sorry I type "ugly" :-) I've been hiding behind that logo on mybloglog for too long. Drew keeps nagging me about replacing it with a photo.

You need to add the listings - or your sellers do. We're starting from scratch here. It's a truly Web2.0 effort -- we are not scraping listings from anywhere. There have been 600 listings posted so far this morning ... so, your listings still have the chance to stand out amongst very few competitors but that opportunity won't last long (we hope). When there are for sale homes in your search results on Zillow, they are indicated by a little red flag on the map - and in the list below the map.

Jeff -

It's an apple issue - safari is still catching up with the web standards we use. We're talking to 'em. I'm a MAC user and share your pain. Personally, I prefer the firefox browser on my Mac -- and Zillow works great on firefox on Macs.

Dec 07, 2006 06:41 AM

Rich Jacobson

Fathom Realty West Sound - Poulsbo, WA

Your Kitsap County WA Real Estate Broker

Nice house there, Ben. Cool color schemes, and quite the green thumb!

David - I think it's a very wise move on your part to engage in conversation here. There is a significant amount of negativism being harbored on here towards Zillow in general. That you are willing to personally field questions openly here will hopefully serve to dispel some of that attitude. Thanks!

Dec 07, 2006 07:04 AM

Jeff Turner

RealSatisfied - Santa Clarita, CA

David, do you have plans to allow posting of "virtual tours" on your listings? If so, when?

Dec 07, 2006 07:35 AM

David Gibbons

Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Rich -

It's my pleasure.

Jeff -

We've just focused on photo's for now but you can link to your virtual tour from your posting on Zillow. I'll pass on your request for virtual tours to our product teams - you're not the first to ask.

FYI - There are no limits to the number of photo's you can upload and we accept multiple image file types. A virtual tour is just a well presented set of photo's, so you can already take a "tour" approach to the photo uploads and their descriptions if you'd like.

Dec 07, 2006 07:41 AM

John Hruska

Homes Charlotte, LLC - Charlotte, NC

HMMMM, that's all I have to say about that also.

Dec 07, 2006 08:04 AM

Jay Thompson

Jay.Life, LLC - Aransas Pass, TX

Ben wrote: I was really impressed with how simple you made it to list a house. For collecting a huge amount of data you've made it really simple. Not that I'm really in the market to sell my house - but I put it up just to see what happens."

Let me know if you need an agent. I know a GREAT source of referrals... :)

David - thanks for posting! Sorry I missed you guys in Phoenix on Monday. Wish I could have made it.

Love the wiki... will add listings later.

Jay
http://www.PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com

Dec 07, 2006 08:36 AM

Diane Rice

Rice Prprty Mgmnt & Rlty, LLC, South Holland, IL - Lansing, IL

SFR, SRES, CNC

Hello David,

Any discussions in the near future for "RENTAL HOMES" on the site ????

Dec 07, 2006 08:53 AM

David Gibbons

Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Hi, it's David from Zillow

MaryAnn - You've got it!

Ben -

So, I cornered our IT director and got this quote on what it takes to deal with Zillow's traffic ... "Almost nothing on the market is sufficient to handle traffic in the real estate space like ours – we’ve certainly dealt with some traffic challenges and peak loads on days like today. Our developers and engineers have been through some similar scenarios in prior lives at sites like Lycos, Amazon, Hotwire, Expedia and MSN and have brought this experience to develop networking, switching, high throughput HTTP servers and custom search engines to handle our very media peaky traffic load."

Jay - No, I'm sorry for the late notice. It's been a bit crazy. Next time! Thanks!

Dec 07, 2006 09:19 AM

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

David: An assistant, The Intrepid Grace, and I, spent a couple hours yesterday entering listings. The final output looks really sharp.

But should it really take two emails - a confirmation and an activation email? And about every third listing, the system asked for me to re-enter credit card info. (For Active Rain Members reading this - there is no charge to post at Zillow, but the system asks for a credit card as ID) - Can't you just log me in once and for all? :-) Maybe the system was overloaded yesterday!

Here's one of ours for the curious:

http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=20770603

Dec 07, 2006 09:38 PM

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

Christine -- In case your question was about searching the system (not entering listings) -- the answer is: Zillow's initial page -- Look right under the words "Why Use Zillow" and click on Buyers: Find homes, compare values

Dec 07, 2006 09:46 PM

William Collins

ERA Queen City Realty - Scotch Plains, NJ

Property and Asset Management

David, Thanks for the post. I am always looking to new opportunities to evaluate. I'll make a point of surveying the territory!

Dec 08, 2006 12:17 AM

Karen Richardson

ERA Key Realty - Northborough, MA

Another for FSBO site for agent prospecting? There is just so much out there for sellers it's all too confusing - If they really want to sell they will still come to us (hopefully without too many horror stories about trying to do it alone)

Dec 08, 2006 12:43 AM

Rick & Ines - Miami Beach Real Estate

Majestic Properties - Miami Beach, FL

Cheryl - did you notice the "Zestimate" on the property you posted is $50,000 under listing price? That can't be good.

ines

Dec 08, 2006 04:34 AM

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

Rick & Ines: Yes ... but it falls within the "Value Range" ... My personal Zillow campaign is now to simply keep asking David G and the rest of them to present the "Value Range" info more prominently ... maybe in the same size and color font as the Zestimate ...

Dec 08, 2006 05:05 AM

Rick & Ines - Miami Beach Real Estate

Majestic Properties - Miami Beach, FL

If you were range pricing, I think it would be a beautiful strategy Cheryl - being on top of the a $100K "Value Range" is brutal for your marketing strategy. A 20K range would be reasonable, a 100K range is ridiculous - that's my opinion, of course.

Ines

Dec 08, 2006 05:50 AM

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

Well, we're not range pricing it ... we're just trying to find the angle that will allow the asking price and the Zestimate to peacefully co-exist.

Dec 08, 2006 06:28 AM

Rick & Ines - Miami Beach Real Estate

Majestic Properties - Miami Beach, FL

Cheryl - I appreciate your opion, but I still see it as a very negative way to market your listing. $100K is a huge range when you're talking about anything under $ 1/2 million. When you do a comparable market analysis and price a property well, and even bellow market, and Zillow gives you a number that is $50,000 bellow that value, how do you explain that to the seller? I do know that a property is priced at what a buyer is willing to buy and seller is willing to sell - but the "peaceful co-existence" of a Zestimate and a well-researched value of a property with a $50,000 difference is not being achieved at this time. BTW - your pricing is at the very top of the $100K range value that Zillow gives. This of course is my opinion, and I respect the fact that you are trying it out. I would love to hear how it goes. Thanks,

ines

Dec 08, 2006 08:40 AM

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

Rick & Ines: Since a free listing on Zillow is ~hmmm~ not the major thrust of our marketing efforts, I am not going to worry much about it. And a low "Zestimate" can at least encourage sellers to be open-minded in their negotiations.

Dec 08, 2006 11:48 AM

Rick & Ines - Miami Beach Real Estate

Majestic Properties - Miami Beach, FL

That's a VALID strategy Cheryl - I will post a listing where the seller is not too willing to negotiate, maybe that will help out. Thanks for sticking by me on this.

ines

Dec 08, 2006 11:56 AM

David Gibbons

Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Cheryl -

Thanks for posting; your listing looks great. Please let us know how it goes.

The CC confirmation should only be requested once per session (i.e. don't close your browser) -- and then only after posting 3 listings -- or where we don't know the owner's details to use that as confirmation. Let me know if that's not how it behaves when next you post.

I have passed on the suggestion about the style of the value range and agree it's an important piece of information -- and that the Zestimate and the list price can peacefully coexist.

Ben -

Thanks for blogging about the experiment - it's a good read so far - keep it up.

Ines -

The width of the value range is a fuction of our confidence in the Zestimate. I agree that a $100K range is no good for pricing a home or deciding on an offer -- luckily that is your job. Remember that the Zestimate is just a research tool -- it doesn't replace an appraisal or a CMA and is best viewed as a "starting point" in finding a home's value.

Jeffery -

So sorry I came across arrogant about the Safari thing; I'm running on lack of sleep. Our developers are in contact with the Safari team -- both companies badly want to see Zillow running on Safari on the Mac. We now work with the development version of Safari (www.webkit.org) and mainstream support is getting very close. We do use MS-centric web technologies on IE -- but our firefox implementation is web-native. When Zillow is running on the production version of safari, we'll announce it on the Zillow blog.

Dec 10, 2006 12:33 PM

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