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ZFresh 5,000

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Services for Real Estate Pros with Zillow.com

Zillow reaches the 5,000 listings posted mark

 

If you posted your listings on Zillow today or yesterday, THANK YOU! It's been an exciting couple of days. If you posted your Make Me Move price, fantastic! 

At a lively Zillow company all-hands meeting today, our latest affectionate phrase, to "ZFresh", was coined. "To ZFresh" is to refresh your browser window on Zillow's home page while watching the listings counter increase. So, when this image popped up in my inbox with the title "Zfresh 5,000", I thought I'd come and post it here. 

Now , you may work in a ZIP code with 5,000 listings -- but here at Zillow, we are absolutely thrilled with this early milestone. The real estate wiki also saw some action. People have written some interesting stuff about our latest effort -- Drew Meyers has a catalog of blog posts on his blog (day 1, day 2). Press is here.

Thanks again for kicking the tires and posting your listings (and for your feedback). There are some new blog posts and discussions about Zillow's news on ActiveRain -- mostly listed in the Zillow Discussions Group on AR (join us).

BTW - AR-team: if you read this, I wanted to mention that I think AR groups are BRILLIANT (don't get me started about reed's law.) Nice.

 

Comments (9)

Cheryl Johnson
Highland Park, CA

David -- One complaint -- I have never typed in my credit card number so many times without buying anything!  The system kept asking to verify my identity about every third listing?! ?! That's a bit annoying -- I imagine a larger company would find it impossible!

Plus I got a confirmation and a separate activiation email for each listing.

It looks like listings will need to be re-entered on a weekly basis.  Which is fine.  Just please fix it so my identity only has to be established one time for each log in.

Thanks!

Dec 08, 2006 09:59 PM
Allison Stewart
St.Cloud Homes - Saint Cloud, FL
St. Cloud Fl Realtor, Osceola County Real Estate 407-616-9904

Hi David-

I agree with Cheryl. I did use it and hope more folks out there see our listings, but a license number may be better than credit card info. Just a suggestion.  Thanks for providing a FREE service for us on Zillow!

Dec 08, 2006 11:00 PM
David Gibbons
Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Cheryl -

Thanks for the feedback. The CC should only be asked once each session (login). What internet browser type are you using, I'd like to test it on my end.

You don't have to re-enter the information about your listings weekly - but you will get an e-mail asking you to click onto the listing and confirm that the house is still for sale. It's also a reminder to update the listing's status if it has changed.

I'll also passed on your feedback about the two confirmation e-mails. We do it is that for privacy reasons (in case your e-mail's been hijacked). So, we decided it was important to e-mail a confirmation when you claim a home and when you post it for sale. Those events most often happen back-to-back for listing agents so I understand it can be an overkill. I will look into it - no promises.

Great feedback - thanks.

Dec 09, 2006 09:07 AM
David Gibbons
Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

Alison -  

Thank You! Buyers are starting their home search on Zillow -- researching what they can afford -- your listings have a good chance of getting buyers attention early in their home search. Let us know how it goes.

Interesting suggestion. Let's get some more feedback on that ...

All - 

I'd love some more opinions about Alison Stewart's suggestion above ... "a license number may be better than credit card info" ... Alison is asking about the enhanced verification required when posting more than 3 listings on Zillow (or when posting a listing where we don't know the owner's name).

  • Do all Realtors share their license numbers?
  • How are licenses verified in your area?
  • Other thoughts?

Dec 09, 2006 09:17 AM
Stefan Scholl
Buyer's Broker of Northern Michigan, LLC - Petoskey, MI
Northern Michigan Real Estate

David,

In Michigan, real estate license numbers are public record, searchable online through the Michigan Dept. of Labor & Economic Growth.  All licensees are required to carry a "pocket card" from the State, which basically is proof of licensure.  In cases where a licensee is trying to set up a showing, and is unknown to the listing agent, they may ask to see your pocket card.  I wonder, once you have verified licensure with license number and identity with credit card, and once the agent has established an account with Zillow with username and password, why would the user have to enter license and/or credit card info ever again? 

Dec 10, 2006 12:09 AM
Cheryl Johnson
Highland Park, CA

David,  you can have both my license number and my credit card number -- I just don't want to keep entering it over and over.  Once you verify me and I log in shouldn't that be enough - whether I'm posting 1 listing or 20?

And for anyone who is interested, the newest version of of the California Association of Realtors purchase contract has a place for both listing and selling agents to enter their personal and office license numbers.  It is not yet a legal requirement, but the DRE's intention is for it to become a legal requirement in 2008.  See the bottom of page 5 of this document.

Dec 10, 2006 01:02 AM
John Novak
Keller Williams Realty The Marketplace - Las Vegas, NV
Henderson, Las Vegas and Summerlin Real Estate

Zfresh ... you know you've arrived when your product inspires its own language! :) Our team will be taking a closer look at your listings function this week.

Dec 10, 2006 02:05 AM
Cheryl Johnson
Highland Park, CA
David -- IE6  -- Actually we probably gronked the system this way -- our assistant, Gracie was doing the data entry -- she emailed me the link to the page requiring the credit card number, I completed that page from my computer, then Gracie resumed entering listings from her computer.  Since we did that little procedure several times, we obviously were able to duplicate the system's behaviour!  I finally just gave her all my credit card info.  If I notice some unusual purchases in the next few weeks, Gracie will be my first suspect :-)
Dec 10, 2006 02:14 AM
David Gibbons
Zillow.com - Seattle, WA

All -

The number of homes you can claim before you need to enter credit card details is being increased. This should be in place by next week. Let me know how it goes and thanks for your feedback.

A primary reason we require this credit card step is to prevent robots from spamming our website. Note that you have a third verification option -- you can also fax a copy of the signature page of the listing agreement to avoid the credit card verification step. 

We are investigating the suggestion about recording license numbers - don't be surprised if you see that on Zillow sometime soon. Thanks!

John -

Thanks.

Cheryl -

Thanks! See my comment above about the robots. 

 

Dec 13, 2006 04:24 PM