Last week I posted the results generated from 149 Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas listings that The Brenkus Team entered on Zillow. To recap, we had one buyer contact (who wrote an offer) and our profile was viewed 25 times.
For week 2, our listing inventory has increased slightly to 154. We received one more buyer contact, and our profile was viewed an additional 32 times. The offer that last week's buyer wrote was not accepted, but they will be traveling to Las Vegas soon to view properties with one of our buyer's agents.
Two weeks have produced two buyer contacts. Free leads, right? ... Not exactly. Factor in the time that it took one of our staff members to enter the initial 149 listings, plus our new listings for this week. And don't forget the time it takes to revise a listing any time we have a price adjustment, new photos, or a status change. When we consider that, these two leads start to get expensive.
Now take a look at the graphic to the right. It's the right-hand column from a web page displaying one of our listings. At the top you see a photo of Rick and Teri with their family, followed by our office contact info. Next, there's a box with additional features of the home, and then ... an ad for another company!
Let me be sure that I understand this. Zillow introduces the new 'Tell Us It's For Sale' feature that allows the owner, listing agent, or anyone else to attach a price to a property. Taking our duty to represent our sellers very seriously, our team responds by entering 154 listings in Zillow, which essentially creates 154 new pages of content for them. And Zillow rewards us by placing ads from our competitors on our listings??
To their credit, Zillow has brought some degree of transparency to real estate. Their business model is not to compete with us as agents, but to sell ads. Right now the execution of that model is not in agents' best interests, but here are two simple suggestions to turn it into a Win - Win:
- Only allow the owner of the property or the listing agent to 'Tell Us It's For Sale. No other party has an interest in insuring that the price is kpet up to date and details of the home are complete and accurate.
- Do not allow other real estate ads on listing pages. On the Home page, Map and Search page, and Real Estate Guide let them advertise all they'd like. Respect the time and effort that real estate agents are putting in to build content for the site.
I will continue to monitor results and post my thoughts on our Zillow experience. If anyone has results to share on the new features (Tell Us It's for Sale, Ask Questions: Share Answers, and EZ Ads) please add your feedback and/or a link to your post in the comments. The Brenkus Team is eager to hear what others have to say!
This was the ad, John. I was also entering listings and particpating in the Q&A section a lot that week.
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