Over the last several years, Zillow has been transitioning from a real estate search portal into a streamlined buying-and-selling entity that offers iBuying services through Zillow Offers, and mortgage, title and escrow services through Zillow Home Loans and Zillow Closing Services. Now, the company has taken a big step further by starting its own licensed brokerage: Zillow Homes.
Zillow Group’s Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson provided details about the new brokerage in a video:
According to Zillow, starting in January 2021, Zillow Offers customers in Atlanta, Phoenix and Tucson will be working directly with a licensed employee of Zillow Homes. In addition, any Zillow-owned homes in these three markets will be listed by Zillow Homes employees. Although the services will be limited to these three locations to start, the company says it plans to expand into additional markets later in 2021.
In the video, Samuelson emphasizes that Zillow Homes will not be recruiting agents from other companies, but instead will be licensing existing Zillow employees under the Zillow Homes entity.
“We’re excited to add another important link in the Zillow Offers transaction chain to offer our customers greater choice and convenience when considering a move,” said Jeremy Wacksman, president of Zillow, in a statement. “At Zillow, our mission is to give people the power to unlock life’s next chapter and we want to help them on their journey home through a range of services that meet their preferences—whether through Zillow Offers or through a trusted Zillow Premier Agent partner.”
Zillow Offers launched in 2018 and is now available in 25 markets. According to the company, Zillow Homes will be “the brokerage of record for Zillow Offers transactions.” The move also frees up the company from using “thousands of disparate data feeds,” allowing them instead to pull from “MLS Internet Data Exchange, or IDX feeds,” according to the video statement.
“We look forward to working more closely with our agents, industry and MLS partners to efficiently serve our mutual customers,” added Wacksman. “Together, we will push to keep the real estate industry moving forward, and adapt to changing consumer preferences and virtual technologies.”
Zillow says it has plans to join local real estate associations, as well as the National Association of REALTORS®. The company also says it will continue investing and expanding its Premier Agent business—through which buyers and sellers can get connected to Zillow Premier Agents—and added that it expects this to be the “preference of the majority of Zillow’s customers.”
This is a developing story. Stay tuned to RISMedia for updates.
I guess we need to stop sending Zillow our listings.
I agree, stop sending them our listings. Killing what we are doing here. We are the professionals!
Agents, stop funding their expansion. Don’t buy leads, send them listings or accept this. We have all worked too hard to let this happen to us. Let’s hope they fail.
Stop sending Zillow our listings, you say? I think that ship has sailed. The transition to a licensed broker enables them to apply/join our MLS systems. This is a perfect example of a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”… It was their long term plan all along, and some turned a blind eye of ignorance to allow it in the first place…
I knew this day was coming. Realtors only have themselves to blame. Giving Zillow all their money for bad leads. They’ll now have to compete in the real world. We shall see.
Can’t believe anyone is surprised.
So here we are, feeding Zillow’s database at no cost to them through MLS, paying to be “Premier Agents,” and paying upwards of $15.00 per month for ads on the Zillow rental portal. If we continue to support them, we are fools. But most of us will, because we have helped them build their brand and credibility among our customers. We should lobby our local MLS services to stop sending Zillow our listings, unless they pay for them; we should use alternative advertising portals to promote our rentals and stop paying to be “Premier Agents.” Does Zillow’s dominant position as a real estate marketer restrain fair trade practices? That is a question an FTC regulator should ask, too.
We still need to stop realtor.com and the other portals. I spend money on my website and cant get it anywhere. Tell your broker to say no to internet on their MLS portal. This is crazy that we have to pay Zillow and Realtor to get our own listing leads from their portals.
Data control is no longer exclusively at the hands of brokers. While Zillow may expand its footprint to include listing homes I believe home buyers will continue to prefer using a knowledgeable, trusted source who knows the buyers needs, wants, timing, personality, family circumstances, financing and motivation to travel through the home buying process. Fee-based Certified Financial Planners whose focus is on client needs and circumstances have replaced a good number of stock brokers whose main interest was earning commissions. As home data becomes even more available, real estate agents will continue to improve the level of service to earn a livelihood. Not a problem.
Pay attention to who your local featured agents are and the trades that are advertising with them. Why would you as an Agent choose to give Zillow money.
Where is nar is all of this?
Warnings of this very action were put out some time ago,
and we were told “no zillow does not want to compete with agents”.
Who is looking out for us?
Zillow hurting Realtors Business. We raise voice together and Stop them. Will create unemployment in this industry.
They are a Trojan horse and have been since day 1-look for smaller brokerages to get crushed early and then they take the big ones down the line…..by LOWering their commission in the transaction ….just wait and see.
Told you so…. Everyone knew this day was coming. What’s next is right.
My MLS does not automatically feed our listings to Zillow. We must purposely choose for each individual listing to be fed to Zillow. Everyone who has this option should NOT let their listings go to Zillow! Anything we can do at this point is an absolute necessity. And I agree with those who’ve stated that a local realtor who knows the local market and the nuances of the neighborhoods is much more valuable. This just means we now have to work even harder to demonstrate our value.
They will have a Broker’s license like any other Broker. They will be MLS participants like any other Broker and REALTOR. Move on, nothing to see here.
To all you agents who paid Zillow thousand of dollars per month over the years, guess what ya did. Bought your selves outa a job:(
When Competitors (us) gang up against one company (Zillow) that is an Anti Trust Violation.
The MLS should create its own IDX system for agents, so we don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to receive the data from third party aggregators, the same data that we feed to our respective MLS(s). Of course, the MLS would miss a source of revenue; however, the MLS exists to serve agents and not third parties. Zillow is just another business predator that has been allowed to exist and expand by foolish agents & brokers who saw it as an easy way to get leads and increase revenues. Well, the chickens have come to roost.
You can’t stop them. They will Join NAR, State and Local boards. This was all part of their master plan and all were warned when we were forced to give our data away years ago.
Many of my buyer clients send properties to me they find on Redfin and Zillow. They don’t do business with those company’s agents because they don’t have my level of skill.
Seller clients list with me for the same reason.
I will build my business the same way I always have over the last 20 years, one client at a time, providing exceptional knowledge, trust and professionalism. That is what makes the phone ring.
If I were in management of a large or mega brokerage, I would probably feel differently. They are more dependent on the new and part timers. It is hard to be successful as a new agent. I think this will make it more difficult.
Never understood why our MLS feeds our data to Zillow. It is too bad NAR did not keep Realtor.com and make it the Realtor premier website, had they did what Zillow did we would not be dealing with this. We would be controlling the data, and would have a fabulous website, now we have this corporate competition. TOTALLY Stupid.
We saw this coming years ago. And they are not the only ones interested in our lunch .Buying leads and advertising on Zillow has brought us to this point. show your value proposition with your customers. You are still the local trusted professional .We don’t need to panic .They need to play ethically like everybody else. Cutting commissions and is a race to the bottom and poor service. We are the gate keepers . Lets defend our businesses and our industry. Do your part everybody.
I pride myself in never paying Zillow a penny for their services. I educate my clients NOT to use Zillow and I show them how their searches in Zillow aren’t as good as searching on Realtor.com. We cannot continue to put our thirst for leads on Zillow over our profession in general. We either are or we aren’t Realtors. Let’s promote our own Realtor.com only and our industry will survive. It’s the only way.
Zillow has been using Realtors to their very own benefit from the get go. They have had some Realtors subscribe to receive leads that they actually receive from our own listings and in the end, to use this income they received from us to use it all against us, taking some of our business away… We built that empire against us….How stupid can we be??? And…with that said, many Realtors are still giving them money every month….
I feel so betrayed. The Realtors built their business up by paying thousands a month so they can now take their success and try take over our jobs, and the lenders jobs. Both people who paid them monthly for 13 years. I started with them in 2007. Very disturbing.
It was anit-trust to not share our listingS with them and many of our customers wanted to see their houses or find one on Zillow. The problem was Move.com reacted to slowly as Zillow was launched and didn’t spruce up Realtor.com so in many ways Zillow was easier to search on.
They have improved Realtor.com but too late. Move.com also didn’t market Realtor.com aggressively enough against Zillow.com to the public. NAR selling Realtor.com, that we built up, to Move.com was a big mistake. We created it, built it and our leadership sold us out. The problem is these companies have lot’s of money to corrupt our leadership for their own benefit.
Zillow has been the pied piper for far too long. I hope agents will finally wake up!
So, when the time comes that Zillow – rather it’s Zillow Homes Brokerage – gets licensed in all 50 States it could be considered a national brokerage, right? More importantly, if the Z brokerage became members of the 100 largest MLS’, it would essentially be getting direct listing feeds from roughly 90% of the agent population and 90% of the national listing inventory. Is that correct?
Realtor.com and Move.com are no different from Zillow, maybe a different model but still showing agents’ listings and charging (substantially) for so called exclusive territorial zip codes, which are not exclusive but rather shared between a limited number of agents. It is time for Brokers to start thinking lower commissions and rebates, because Zillow will start offering rebates and lower commissions soon. It is one way to increase market share, just look at how Redfin started and where they are now.
I think we should blame NAR and CAR! Why did Realtor.com go to a non Realtor company in the first place? Realtor.com became a dinosaur so Zillow and the other portals have taken over! What exactly are those National and State and Local dues doing to help us here?.. it never made sense that agents work their butts off to get listings then have to pay these Companies for their own Buyers? That’s a failure of Realtor.com….which should have stayed in “our hands”!!!The cats out of the bag now…there is no turning back.
Now ask yourself this: What happens when buyer agent commissions are paid by the buyer, listings are done for 1%, and Zillow charges a flat $40/hr for their buyer agents? ($30 to salaried agent, $10 to boss.) Typically, we are talking 30-50 hours, regardless of house price. On that $400k house, your buyer can pay Zillow $2000 instead of your current $10,000 commission. Bye bye.
Try telling your listing client their home won’t appear on Zillow and see what the reaction is. This ship done sailed.
I was a brand new agent and joined Zillow. I quickly discovered I was funding their agenda. I quit using them and hope the word gets out to all agents so they won’t succeed on the backs of us realtors!!
I wonder which employee from Zillow will volunteer to serve on the Local, State and National Boards of REALTORS that they plan to so graciously join? Which one(s) will organize backpack programs, or food drives, or give back to their communities, like most of the rest of us do?
Unfortunately we built the business for them.
What a disgrace! They build a company off the labor of Realtors and now want to take from the ones that built their company. All Realtors, Realtor Boards along with NAR must unite and stop syndicating our listings.
All you agents whining need to vote. It’s not just our industry. AI & robots will replace us all sooner than you think. It’s time for UBI & a tax system that invests in startups, not corporate greed.
Zillow slipped in with broker syndication years ago and agents have been watching them grow and grow and take over all their SEO placements. Time agents and brokerages alike put more into their own website. NAR is supposed to be there for the agents but what happened! I am not an agent but I grew up in Real Estate with both my parents becoming brokers for over 30 years and I have watched over the years as their industry has been torn apart by 3rd party companies who don’t really care about the agent. I hope this puts a fire under the agents and they come back even stronger with their on placement.
I wonder if Zillow, now that they will be in the agent’s shoes, will still agree with the sharing of MLS data?
Agree with all of you, for the most part, lol….I also think Fathom is a big enough company to withhold our listings from the MLS. Buyers will still find out listings….I am sure other companies will be doing the same
Zillow will grow and Amazon will buy them out.
Zillow said would NEVER compete with agents for years!!! I was a premier agent years ago and it was reasonable but last time it was $3400 per month 4 X original amount and leads were HORRIBLE…they were PRE-SCREENING (cherry picking which ones to keep)…should be someone out there wanting to take on this “conflict of interest” for agent. One the other hand, if you have worked with Zillow employees high turn over and really not customer service oriented so “bring it on”!!!
I think they will find that it takes a lot more to move homes then sharing information…been doing it for 34 years…I know!
“Wait, but Zillow shows that my home is worth $50k more than YOU are telling me”. Let’s see how Zillow will deal with their Zestimate BS now.
How does this impact the companies that use Dotloop which is now owned by Zillow? Zillow has full access to our client information now too?
Zillow’s plans to become a Realtor brokerage and join NAR, and the local Boards is a reality. This means they are afforded all the same rights as us. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We bought into the pay for leads game, thus allowing the shift to happen. Now what? I wish I knew.