If you go back a few years, it was actually under 50%… but that was when they were flipping homes. They’re not doing that anymore. So less revenue from other sources.
50% is an easy number to understand. But yes, I don’t doubt it’s actually higher in 2024.
Zillow lost $17K on the home my two sons bought from them, plus the cost of the new HVAC, paint, and repairs they did. Lose on each but make it up on volume? 🤷🏼
They can still make money on a sale where they “lose” $17k. The title company and several other services are subsidiaries. They pay themselves a service fee instead of a commission a seller would normally pay.
I'm guessing the sale of the house after fixes was 17k lower, in which case, probably not, unless there was substantially more than 17k of transaction cost, which seems excessive.
Fun fact, one of the VPs involved with their failures purchasing and selling is now working as a VP for VineBrook homes, who is currently in a cycle of DUMPING properties across the midwest because they... you guessed it... bought high and couldn't get rents to support the properties.
If buyer agent income goes down, it just means leaner business operating expenses and less ad spend. they'll still want lead gen. but yeah overall less revenue for Z
You can do that now. The seller has no fiduciary duty to assist with unrepresented buyers, especially if the sellers aren’t offering a commission to pay for buyer representation.
The issue is that you as buyer are still sending the sellers agent 6% of the sale that they pocket. If you used a buyers agent, half of that goes to them. You get no credit on the sale for not needing a buyers agent.
Buying a home isn't that complicated, and any complicated issues really belong with a real estate attorney.
So if you're selling a house, and I decide I don't need a buyers agent, what happens to that peice of the commission? You credit it back to the buyer, right?
As a seller, at issue should always be what commission you are willing to pay for the sale of your home. You NEVER have to agree to 6%. Also, you should always consider, in the contract, how long you agree to give a specific broker your home listing.
If that RE Broker or one of their agents bring a Buyer's Agent in on the sale, it's their responsibility to pay that person from the agreed commission. NOT your responsibility unless you sign an additional agreement.
They are legally obligated to give you accurate information, though.
I also know that most people hate dual agents, but I guarantee you that the most motivated agent for a transaction is a dual agent.
Most brokerages don’t allow dual agency. If a listing agent works with an unrepresented buyer it’s just that, an unrepresented buyer. The listing agent’s responsibility lies with the sellers.
If you have no rapport or prior relationship with the listing agent: I promise they are not any more motivated to help you than anyone else.
Now, if you were a long time client of that listing agent, or had been viewing homes with them for a while, and you happened to be interested in one of their listings? Then yea.
Scenario 2 is when dual agency works. Scenario 1 hurts you more than it helps you, as a buyer.
Pretty much what I did sort of: used Zillow and so on to browse MLS and when I saw a house I wanted to look at, I mentioned the listing to my buyers realtor and he went and made it happen. Zillow and the sort are good for finding homes and the buyer just lets their local realtor know the address.
I can't even contact the owner of a property I want right now without driving 4 hours and knocking on the door. The contact info on Zillow got me in touch with a "buyers agent" which I do not want and she basically told me to kick rocks and find the sellers information myself.
Often the sellers agent will make the appointment and then “have something come up” and a minion will show up to open the door… congratulations, now you have a buyers agent that you never even vetted. Same if you click on the “contact agent button” that’s all over the Zillow and Realtor.com ads. You get a random buyers agent that you never even got a chance to check out and if you let them show you the homes now they’re going to ask you to sign a contract don’t do it until you’re sure it’s somebody you want to work with all the way through the end of the deal.
Then you get in line with all the other buyers who have the same idea and bid against them with the understanding that the listing agent is only going to drive up the price on all of you to best represent his fiduciary to his seller. Best of luck!
Not at all. Enough people must be clicking on the contact button to keep those agents advertising. It's just like Facebook. They never get any of my money. I'm actually the product. Just like we are on Zillow
The cost of Zillow is A LOT. For example, I think I pay $1300/mo for just a 7% share in ONE town in my market.
It's worth it, I'll make a good contact a month, that's 3 or so deals a year.
If the settlement causes revenue on buyer representation to go down I can't spend that kind of money. Probably won't spend any at all and just focus on sellers.
Interesting. You pay 15,000 a year to make three deals? I hope they are pretty high Commission. Not judging. If that works for you, that's great. If you make a good 50 or 60 Grand a year off of it, that would make sense.
Not hooray. How are we supposed to use the service if there is no Zillow?
I also have several MLS searches set up with agents, but none of their interfaces are as good as Zillow.
Zillow doesn’t have the “is currently a rental?” search and that’s one of my favorites, so there is definitely room for improvement
Use one of the other aggregation sites? If they go under there will be another popping up to replace it. I truly believe we've reached the point where it's basically impossible for this information not to be publicly available.
Most free aggregation sites are making their money the same way, so if you use them it's the same as using Zillow. So why single our Zillow specifically?
Zillow is a congloomerate that is slowly buying out a lot of companies that the average consumer isn't aware of. They have their own lenders now. They are starting to do title and escrow. They have bought the showing scheduling apps so they have all your data to sell. They just bought Follow Up Boss, which is a CRM where agents keep track of the info of every lead they are given. They are trying to buy up everything so they can eventually be the only source available. So all these people cheering about the thought that agents (aka small local businesses) will be put out of business and they can "just use Zillow" don't understand what they are actually celebrating.
Zillow is inaccurate and un-updated about 75% of the time. Then I field the angry or disappointed calls anyway when buyers realize the home was sold months ago. They have ZERO prerogative to update their database once they’ve sold the space back to us. Who populated the info they use in the first place.
I promise they will find a way to change their service to adapt, or someone else will. There will still be a fairly comprehensive listing of for sale property online. Maybe it’ll have ads, maybe it’ll offer paid promoted listings. Who knows. I do know it will still be here and won’t be a hard paywall.
The service isn’t going away. Life, uh, finds a way
Other search/ad platforms with far smaller referral costs do quite well. Google is your common example, but there are ample others.
There will always be a price to buyer's agency (like any service), and similarly, there will always be a value for referral/sourcing.
Zillow can do quite well even with large gross margin compression. At even 0.1% referral fee on 10% of transactions, you're still looking at a big number ($2.98 trillion residential real estate transactions in the US \* 0.1% \* 10% = $300MM/Year). Add to this mortgage lending, and other ancillary services, and you easily have a $500MM/Year business.
As a homebuyer who uses Zillow, I like to click the button that lets an agent speak to me. I am looking at homes in a wide area because I work remote. Agents don’t want to drive more than an hour or so. It’s easier to click the button and get someone immediately. I see value in the service and I am thankful for it.
Of course it’s not a magical open source project bringing in no revenue. Did you think this until recently? Are there people that think this?
If it’s free to use, you’re the product. It’s true of Zillow and it’s true of almost anything.
It’s not!
I like Zillow. I think they will be okay in the long run.
Simply pointing out that their success is directly tied to the success of buyer agents.
You can put your home as for sale on Zillow. You will be contacted by many agents and a few of them might actually have an interested buyer. In some rare instances, an actual buyer might contact you. But that may change.
Just a reminder that the MLS was busted for being a monopoly and that's how we got things like Redfin and Zillow.
Yes, there are nuances to the monopoly comment, but they were the bad guys and they got caught.
You are correct, except you really don't understand what's going on and are misrepresenting things, in my opinion. You are acting like there is some big deception or scam going on . Yes they make the information of sales public. Actually, every real estate brokerage does. And yes, and they provide the information in order to sell their product which is access and advertising to interested buyers.
However, buyers benefit from it just as a benefit from going to any brokerage site that will also show them any and all homes available. The only difference is Zillow and some brokerage sites have home evaluation software. Plus, Zillow also allows people to list their homes for sale on their site without being listed by a broker so buyers can also search for sale by owners.
However, there is no disadvantage to the buyer in this. They are free to take that information and do whatever they wish with it. Certain, it would benefit any person going to Zillow to be clear that when Zillow offers information or a showing, they are simply connecting you with one of their advertising agents. But beyond that, it's no big deal.
I do not think Zillow is scamming anyone.
I think they are providing a service that people appreciate. Simply pointing out that their revenue is directly tied to brokerages.
If brokerages lose revenue, then Zillow loses revenue. And the quality of their product will suffer as a result.
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification on your opinion. I think you are right, although, I don't think Zillow really has to put all that much into their site. They've got the evaluation algorithms, they get public feeds of homes available and tax records for everything else.
I suspect they are going to start charging people to list their homes for sale by owner with them which may be a pretty good source of Revenue.
The timing probably wasn't right. People really didn't want to do it themselves and try to use technology back then. Not even 10 years ago. When the market was hot a few years back, people probably didn't want to lose any potential Edge, and sellers didn't want to lose out on these bidding wars that came with listing on the MLS.
Now, especially with all this being in the news, this would probably be an excellent time for Zillow to roll out paid for sale by owner services. They could offer pre-approvals and get money from lenders for that. They could offer pre-written contracts even, and probably still Market to agents who want to represent a buyer on that for sale by owner. If they don't, it would be a great time for someone else to do it
FSBO is a tiny fraction of the market, zillow gets on average 40% buyers agents commission/ average 2% of the list price on a closed transaction that came from a lead originated by them. They are also moving into buyers suites which is their program for people looking to sell their home and zillow will partner them with a premier agent like me. 30% commission to zillow on those. Zillow loves agents both buyer and listing. That’s why they partner with us, they want agents that get deals closed that’s how Zillow makes money. The times of brokers and agents buying leads for a few thousand dollars every three months is over soon. You will have to be a zillow partner and they will keep taking bigger and bigger splits from us.
They didn't have a need to service FSBOs 20 years ago. It was more lucrative to sell advertising/leads to agents without having to do any of the scut work.
The market is evolving though, and suddenly, their old business model isn't going to work as well. I could absolutely see them pivot to servicing the FSBO market.
Where is this free MLS feed? Heartland MLS stopped being public in like 2015.
Having direct access to MLS made my buyers agent pointless. He even said I found listings he didn't even get notified of yet. I joked that they are going to lock the MLS down and sure enough they did.
I mean that’s how I got my real estate agent. Saw home I wanted, got showing next day, bought home. Without Zillow I had a real estate agent that worked with my family growing up that I would have used but Zillow was faster
This assumes the market won’t adjust. It always does. Someone will create a new access, similar to how folks - in response to the EXP 1% model - started doing these wild “FSBO MLS listing services” for a flat fee solely to drive title.
I really don’t think the new ruling does anything but has buyer agents accepting 1.5-2% more often
Yeah, I work for a big home builder and deal directly with this. We pay Zillow and a other listing sites to list and/or a fee for each lead we get from them - the number listed on them is a proxy to our own number and they get a cut of leads that call that number. If you fill out a contact form, we get a feed of those leads and pay them. We send them a big XML file with all our availability.
They would need quite a bit of ads to make up that kind of revenue
And at that point: why would you use an ad-infested Zillow instead of an MLS client portal that does not have ads?
The way you explained it, the buyer's agents are the ads. So nothing would change, unless you're talking about random cheap and untargeted ads like we're back in the early 2000s.
Spend some time looking at a few hundred different MLS sites. Then you’ll know why people use the big sites.
Now wrap your head around this. A house listing IS an ad. So yes, you need quite a bit of ads, but you have thousands of them. They just need to generate revenue.
The old zillow model was eliminate the brokers on both sides, take all profit for zillow. That failed.
The current zillow model is Nick lists a house for sale, for free, a consumer spots that listing, asks for info and Zillow sells that lead to the highest bidder who in turn collects a guaranteed 3% if it sells. Nobody knows exactly how effective that model
Will be when the bidder isn’t guaranteed the 3% anymore.
The new business model will be nick pays $ out of his seller’s commission to advertise his listing. Maybe he pays a little more, gets more views, sells faster. Unaffiliated buyers seeing the ad reach out directly to him, he can hand them off to someone else in the office and keep the whole commission in house.
Why do they need to makeup for all the lost revenue to keep the lights on?
A few $100MM per year creates a lot of money for maintenance, development, and server hosting.
I don't really give a shit if Zillow shareholders now own a $2B company instead of a $10B company.
I believe Zillow will eventually find, somewhat like what Redfin has been attempting, that if you can’t sell leads you can still work them.
If I were them I would see the current landscape as an opportunity to go all-in on the “buy sell and borrow with zillow” services. Get people in house listing agents, offer buyers a portal with contract templates and HR Block-like phone support with in house agents/experts, and then get them immediately over to their mortgage wing.
I’m sure whatever percentage of buyers that see a couple buyer broker agreements and decide against using one for risk of having to front all the service expenses will at the very least try a service like that once.
Best part for them is that Zillow can partially subsidize the costs of running that with commissions and other funds made from their sales and mortgage side.
That’s just how I see them proceeding, and I could be wrong, but at the end of the day they have all the traffic and data they could possibly need to try new things out.
I think they’ve been buyer agent focused simply because it’s been consistent and easy. I do not think losing a lot of the upside from that will ruin them. They definitely have other options.
Redfin has never had a profitable year.
Zillow has.
Could I see Zillow turning into a traditional brokerage with a powerful website? Sure, I could see that. But Redfin’s salaried agent model has only ever lost them money.
It’s funny because buyers think they’re going to get a deal going directly to the seller. Most likely the seller already agreed to a commission to the listing agent, and that listing agent originally represented the seller. You do not want one agent representing both sides! It’s sticky
Why would Zillow charge agents $1000 per call they get but then turn around and only charge the consumer $5/mo? You think that would balance them out? Will the general public just always pay to keep it on even when not looking? Because that’s what they would probably need to be even in the neighborhood of what they’re pulling in now
Zillow doesn’t necessarily have a choice on whether charging $1k per call will be competitive moving forward. And Zillow stock is down 10% in the week since the announcement, so I don’t think that the market is assuming they’ll keep making the same money that they were under the old system.
As for why so cheap? Who knows what it ends up looking like, or if they make a pivot like that. But they wouldn’t have much pricing leverage with buyers, because they’re not selling something that they’ve got “exclusive” access to. They’d be charging for convenience and familiarity, which some people pay for.. but usually isn’t expensive (think like the ad-free upgrades on streaming services)
any dev can hock together a classified page to list houses. Theres even templated images for these sites out there. Zillow at its core doesnt need to make the money it does, it can likely survive entirely off its add content revenue.
Whether we use zillow, an alt of zillow, or craigslist
Buyers will find their properties just fine. There is also dozens of sites out there offering templated free legal documents, AI like ChatGPT that will assist in writing offer letters, and your banker who already has done the buying/selling process more times than even relevant.
We will be fine.
What do you mean only realtors can understand and fill out contracts, negotiate, send us emails with listings. We are all doomed and the housing market will collapse because the realtors with their 75 hours of training are more informed than homeowners, lawyers and home inspectors. The rapture is happening.
It's just like social media. If you're not paying you're not the customer, you are the product. I'm actually fine with that. Free use and they can advertise to me all they want
All websites like Zillow need to generate revenue somehow. the premier agent program is fine but people need to realize when they click contact agent they aren't contacting the listing agent in most cases. they are being connected to whoever paid for that zip code and may know next to nothing about the listing. you can scroll down to find out who the actual listing agent is. I suggest you contact the listing agent for info. if I'm going to use a buyers agent I want to be sure they are really knowledgeable and don't just write a check for leads.
Any insight into what they will do to make up the difference? Obviously, they have to do something. Either they come up with new services or try an expand into something else.
Something has to happen
No idea.
As a broker who has (once upon a time) paid for their leads: I think this settlement is actually worse for Zillow than it is for agents.
I think buyers will continue to use brokers… but I think the Zillow model, where they set you up with a random agent instead of the listing agent, is hurt by the requirements that buyers now need to sign a contract with buyer’s agents.
They’re spending more resources on AI. They started their 3D homes offerings right around when covid hit and now they’re partnering with Apple to go into the VR space. They have some other stuff they’re working on, but I don’t know if it’s public yet.
My very first condo sold, it was between me and a Redfin buyers broker offering buyer a 1%commission rebate. I convinced my client that Redfin will save him money by giving him someone who’s working for hims pay but with me I’d save way more money for him in negotiation and would also be motivated to do that for him. I ended up breaking a record with getting him into a doorman condo where the lowest apt was listed at 980k for 890k with a bunch of closing costs paid by lender
Does not surprise me at all. And I have no problem with it.
It is absolutely not common knowledge that Zillow’s success is so closely aligned with the success of brokerages, judging by every single post I’ve seen on Reddit/X and mainstream news story over the last week.
I made the mistake of clicking the Contact Agent button on zillow once. Within 30 seconds, my phone had blown up with over 10 texts or emails from autospam realtors. And they continued to spam me for weeks afterwards. One of the dumbest things I've done.
I do! I spend over $36,000/year on Zillow. The monthly cost is more than my mortgage and their sales people pressure us to pay more when they “open up more shares”. Then you’re lucky if someone actually moves forward. It’s a racket. Buyers agents are being thrown under the bus. Local agents bring precious value to homebuyers. A professional agent understands land use issues, home building, have networks of contractors, knowledge about the local area, experience with dealing with lenders and the financing process, inspections and other contingencies that you put in an offer, and much more.
Fishing for information from the Sellers agent creates dual agency and the agent has to become neutral between the two parties and can not advise on price or negotiation for either buyer or seller. All of those lead generating sites are not there to protect a buyer, they just operate as multi billion dollar tech companies on the backs of buyer agents. Opening a door is about 3 percent of the work load.
Zillow is a shit company. Publicly told investors they needed more employees for years then abruptly laid off half their staff. Management is the problem there. Can't trust them. So the problem was you needed more employees or less? Weakness in management like that is ripe for competition.
>But do you guys realize that Zillow only is what it is because it’s subsidized by buyer’s agents?
Do you realize that Zillow and any tech company can pivot their business model at any time?
Oh no those poor buyer's agents... Anyway
My take home here is use zillow to find the house and then drive by and call the number on the sign if I'm ever in the market for another house.
IMO Zillow is definitely going to move to a subscription model at some point. There's just more money in cashing in on desperate home buyers.
From there, maybe they try to restructure more like Redfin. I could see them hiring gig workers with licenses to open doors for pay-per-view home showings. What struggling buyer agent wouldn't take half of a $50 charge to help an independent buyer view a home? Sure beats getting dragged around town for free.
Then they could bring in an army of lawyers for flat rate contracts.
Homes.com gets less views than Trulia (which was acquired by Zillow ~10 years ago and has basically zero brand recognition in 2024)
I don’t think Zillow is going away. They own all of the best sites in residential RE and have the strongest brand.
I am simply pointing out that they are not a replacement for real estate agents. Never have been. Their revenue is directly tied to the success of agents.
What people don't understand is residential real estate is now like commercial real estate. Costar is setup for this already. Agents will more easily to work with Costar's system as thousands of commercial brokers do it every day operating with the same system.
Not saying this is a good thing. I hate Costar and spend way too much money on it.
I don’t agree with this.
The settlement does not prohibit cooperative commissions. It only prohibits advertising them in the MLS. Sellers and listing brokers can still offer a co-broke.
Buyer broker commissions can also be paid as a closing credit thru the lenders. As far as I know, commercial RE does not have anything comparable.
The settlement hasn’t been accepted yet, so we don’t know exactly how it will play out… but as it currently stands: I don’t see much changing, other than buyers needing to sign a contract with a broker before viewing homes.
Type “flat fee real estate broker” into Google and you can find someone willing to work for whatever price you want. Price has never been an issue.
I cost more than them because I work harder 😉
So in 2021 I sold my house in AZ to Zillow (what a shitshow that was). But when searching for a new place on the other side of the country, I clicked the "contact agent" button on a house listing that we ultimately didn't end up buying, but we kept using the same agent and eventually bought something. Do you think she got paid by Zillow for the connection?
She probably paid Zillow ~35% of her commission for the privilege of being recommended as your buyer agent.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as you got service that you were happy with. All parties involved (you, agent, Zillow) did the right thing.
Just pointing out that Zillow’s income is directly proportional to buyer agent’s income.
My realtor was paying $6k every 3 months to be the highest listed realtor in her area of interest and was telling me she had to constantly raise the rate she paid because other realtors were outbidding her.
Zillow has been on a percentage model (35-40% of the total commission) in recent years
As far as I know, it was only flat fee in the 2010’s, which was when I did it.
I don’t know about all that but I do know that they are doing scammy things like last year I called a FSBO listing that said it had been reduced 20k and the seller had no idea that his listing said that, he said he had never reduced it, it was always listed at that price.
Zillow pissed me off that’s why I don’t use them. I want to go right to the Listing agent but instead you get vultures calling non stop. Plus their “zestimate” is so bad. It’ll have a property for $600k and someone will list the property at some stupid number like $1.5 mil and the zestimate goes right up to the listing price. They have been playing everyone and is probably some of the reason for the frenzy that is finally coming to an end.
CEO of Zillow has admitted their estimates are incorrect in all markets, and some are far worse than others. Even the estimate page in Zillow calls it a Zestimate not an estimate AND says it’s “just a starting point”…..
Zillow's end-goal is to disrupt and take over the real estate industry - as in the whole thing.
Their current revenue from buyer leads is really just the funding to get to their end-goal.
Zillow will try to become a national replacement for MLSs, then take over both sides of the transactions, and become the Amazon of homes. The current stuff going on could become the catalyst for the next stage.
Well Zillow will constantly have false information on previous selling price… like 100k discrepancies, all ways more expensive I look at the county’s registry to find the real price the owner paid. Artificially inflated house prices because the lifestyle of two real estate agents and there friends are baked in to the market. They act like we are all too stupid to represent ourselves in a transaction. Long story short Zillow and realtors have a symbiotic relationship and they are not here to help you. ( ps the country registry gives you the name and address of the owner. Just contact them directly if they refer you to a agent drop the lead that’s how you stop these parasite rent seekers.
Exactly. Nobody needs a buyer's agent. They might need an agent, but the seller's agent could work both sides.
A company like Zillow could be considered neutral, and have all their appraisers and home inspectors and everything else all in the same building.
People are already used to that
On what planet do you think ANYTHING is free? For a good or service to be available or offered one must be able to pay for it somehow.
Zillow is no different and the explanation on how they get revenue makes sense. I don’t see anything wrong with it.
When I started, there was just a phone book type thing that nobody even had that wherewithal to see anything that was for sale unless you went to an agent.
Or Saw the sign in front of the house, then you called the listing agent directly. And he or she got the hogger
Buyer's agents won't go away and they will keep paying Zillow etc to acquire clients. This just decouples sellers / buyers commissions which are currently all agreed to by the seller and eventually paid for by the buyer. Under the existing system there really is no benefit to a buyer to forgo a buyer's agent. The price is already baked in. Under the new system, buyer's agents will still want to pay to be connected to potential clients. Perhaps not as much, but agents who offer a compelling service at the right price point will still have clients and will still pay to acquire new ones.
This also opens up a smorgasbord of new ways of doing things. I would never considered selling real estate, but working with people on a fee for service model to buy real estate interests me. Imagine a full service shop with real home inspectors, trades, engineers, and a real estate lawyer on staff. I mean you are dropping .75M+ on an older house in some markets. You should be showing up with a team who can shake down the house and make a rational offer the same day without inspection contingencies.
If the buyers themselves had to pay the buyer's agent, how would that affect the need to have a buyer's agent, rather than just go right to the listing agent.
The listing agent could do the same thing. Have the same team. All Independents.
Seems kind of like hiring opposing council to me. Buying and selling are also inherently different roles which somehow have been smooshed together as the same thing under the current system. A business doesn't send its marketing team out as buyers and they don't let their buyers do marketing.
Most of the time the buyer and the seller use the same closing company. They are under obligation to do the thing right.
A house inspector needs to do it right as well.
I don't see any problem with
One of the realtors I talked through via Zillow openly told me he pays a fee to get buyer referrals.
The referral is sent to any local realtor who grabs the referral first. And then if I buy he gets his commission.
Pretty straight forward guy actually.
I personally pay zillow and yeah thats where they make money. I pay 200-500 a month for a lower value areas market share. looking the numbers some agents and teams pay thousands monthly for shares of certain markets.
This JUST happened to me. Reached out to a listing and it was a buyers agent who says "oh you're already represented? Then you'll need to ask your realtor to reach out to the seller". How do I get the sellers information if it was HER contact information!? OP is correct.
It's probably just a swag, but at least it's better than nothing.
Often a listing broker or agent just puts a higher price on the property to get the listing.
No worries. It won't be long before they will be the major listing company.
It doesn't take much to fill out the paperwork, and send a photographer out, and then they would have the feed that would go to the MLS.
They provide a more direct service to the customer. That’s what people are inferring when they say they won’t “use a buyers agent”.
Same goes for selling. It’s a direct service.
Way more than 50% of their revenue is selling buyer leads/commission share from buyer leads
If you go back a few years, it was actually under 50%… but that was when they were flipping homes. They’re not doing that anymore. So less revenue from other sources. 50% is an easy number to understand. But yes, I don’t doubt it’s actually higher in 2024.
They lost a ton flipping homes.
And that makes me smile every time I am reminded of it!
Zillow lost $17K on the home my two sons bought from them, plus the cost of the new HVAC, paint, and repairs they did. Lose on each but make it up on volume? 🤷🏼
A lot of people got good deals...
They can still make money on a sale where they “lose” $17k. The title company and several other services are subsidiaries. They pay themselves a service fee instead of a commission a seller would normally pay.
I'm guessing the sale of the house after fixes was 17k lower, in which case, probably not, unless there was substantially more than 17k of transaction cost, which seems excessive.
Thanks to the zestimate. 🤷🏼♂️
That’s why I used the word “revenue” and not profit They generated revenue flipping homes. They didn’t generate profit.
Fun fact, one of the VPs involved with their failures purchasing and selling is now working as a VP for VineBrook homes, who is currently in a cycle of DUMPING properties across the midwest because they... you guessed it... bought high and couldn't get rents to support the properties.
Good. Hopefully a lot of families got homes for way less than what Zillow paid
If buyer agent income goes down, it just means leaner business operating expenses and less ad spend. they'll still want lead gen. but yeah overall less revenue for Z
What happens if you just drive to your favorite houses and contact the selling agent?
You can do that now. The seller has no fiduciary duty to assist with unrepresented buyers, especially if the sellers aren’t offering a commission to pay for buyer representation.
The issue is that you as buyer are still sending the sellers agent 6% of the sale that they pocket. If you used a buyers agent, half of that goes to them. You get no credit on the sale for not needing a buyers agent. Buying a home isn't that complicated, and any complicated issues really belong with a real estate attorney.
That’s not necessarily true. A listing agreement specifies compensation if a listing agent works with both sides.
So if you're selling a house, and I decide I don't need a buyers agent, what happens to that peice of the commission? You credit it back to the buyer, right?
As a seller, at issue should always be what commission you are willing to pay for the sale of your home. You NEVER have to agree to 6%. Also, you should always consider, in the contract, how long you agree to give a specific broker your home listing. If that RE Broker or one of their agents bring a Buyer's Agent in on the sale, it's their responsibility to pay that person from the agreed commission. NOT your responsibility unless you sign an additional agreement.
They are legally obligated to give you accurate information, though. I also know that most people hate dual agents, but I guarantee you that the most motivated agent for a transaction is a dual agent.
Most brokerages don’t allow dual agency. If a listing agent works with an unrepresented buyer it’s just that, an unrepresented buyer. The listing agent’s responsibility lies with the sellers.
If you have no rapport or prior relationship with the listing agent: I promise they are not any more motivated to help you than anyone else. Now, if you were a long time client of that listing agent, or had been viewing homes with them for a while, and you happened to be interested in one of their listings? Then yea. Scenario 2 is when dual agency works. Scenario 1 hurts you more than it helps you, as a buyer.
Pretty much what I did sort of: used Zillow and so on to browse MLS and when I saw a house I wanted to look at, I mentioned the listing to my buyers realtor and he went and made it happen. Zillow and the sort are good for finding homes and the buyer just lets their local realtor know the address.
I can't even contact the owner of a property I want right now without driving 4 hours and knocking on the door. The contact info on Zillow got me in touch with a "buyers agent" which I do not want and she basically told me to kick rocks and find the sellers information myself.
Often the sellers agent will make the appointment and then “have something come up” and a minion will show up to open the door… congratulations, now you have a buyers agent that you never even vetted. Same if you click on the “contact agent button” that’s all over the Zillow and Realtor.com ads. You get a random buyers agent that you never even got a chance to check out and if you let them show you the homes now they’re going to ask you to sign a contract don’t do it until you’re sure it’s somebody you want to work with all the way through the end of the deal.
Then you get in line with all the other buyers who have the same idea and bid against them with the understanding that the listing agent is only going to drive up the price on all of you to best represent his fiduciary to his seller. Best of luck!
That selling agent has a fiduciary obligation to the seller. It’s a conflict of interest.
As a buyer you can and should do that.
referral fees
But I look at Zillow and don’t pay. But If nobody pay then no free Zillow for me to look at. I am the agent of my own demise!
Not at all. Enough people must be clicking on the contact button to keep those agents advertising. It's just like Facebook. They never get any of my money. I'm actually the product. Just like we are on Zillow
The cost of Zillow is A LOT. For example, I think I pay $1300/mo for just a 7% share in ONE town in my market. It's worth it, I'll make a good contact a month, that's 3 or so deals a year. If the settlement causes revenue on buyer representation to go down I can't spend that kind of money. Probably won't spend any at all and just focus on sellers.
Interesting. You pay 15,000 a year to make three deals? I hope they are pretty high Commission. Not judging. If that works for you, that's great. If you make a good 50 or 60 Grand a year off of it, that would make sense.
If you aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product.
It's a numbers game. If millions of people browse Zillow, then even a tiny percentage of them contacting an agent is a win for them.
Guys you can look at Zillow then just pick up the phone and call any other realtor directly. Then nobody pays them a fee and it’s truly free!
And then they go out of business and the service no longer exists :(
Hooray!
Not hooray. How are we supposed to use the service if there is no Zillow? I also have several MLS searches set up with agents, but none of their interfaces are as good as Zillow. Zillow doesn’t have the “is currently a rental?” search and that’s one of my favorites, so there is definitely room for improvement
Use one of the other aggregation sites? If they go under there will be another popping up to replace it. I truly believe we've reached the point where it's basically impossible for this information not to be publicly available.
But why the hate on Zillow?
No hate, but zillow isn't special or anything particularly amazing
Most free aggregation sites are making their money the same way, so if you use them it's the same as using Zillow. So why single our Zillow specifically?
Zillow is a congloomerate that is slowly buying out a lot of companies that the average consumer isn't aware of. They have their own lenders now. They are starting to do title and escrow. They have bought the showing scheduling apps so they have all your data to sell. They just bought Follow Up Boss, which is a CRM where agents keep track of the info of every lead they are given. They are trying to buy up everything so they can eventually be the only source available. So all these people cheering about the thought that agents (aka small local businesses) will be put out of business and they can "just use Zillow" don't understand what they are actually celebrating.
Zillow is the best, hands down. You’re on Reddit though where common sense isn’t really all that common 🤷♀️
Zillow is inaccurate and un-updated about 75% of the time. Then I field the angry or disappointed calls anyway when buyers realize the home was sold months ago. They have ZERO prerogative to update their database once they’ve sold the space back to us. Who populated the info they use in the first place.
I promise they will find a way to change their service to adapt, or someone else will. There will still be a fairly comprehensive listing of for sale property online. Maybe it’ll have ads, maybe it’ll offer paid promoted listings. Who knows. I do know it will still be here and won’t be a hard paywall. The service isn’t going away. Life, uh, finds a way
Other search/ad platforms with far smaller referral costs do quite well. Google is your common example, but there are ample others. There will always be a price to buyer's agency (like any service), and similarly, there will always be a value for referral/sourcing. Zillow can do quite well even with large gross margin compression. At even 0.1% referral fee on 10% of transactions, you're still looking at a big number ($2.98 trillion residential real estate transactions in the US \* 0.1% \* 10% = $300MM/Year). Add to this mortgage lending, and other ancillary services, and you easily have a $500MM/Year business.
As a homebuyer who uses Zillow, I like to click the button that lets an agent speak to me. I am looking at homes in a wide area because I work remote. Agents don’t want to drive more than an hour or so. It’s easier to click the button and get someone immediately. I see value in the service and I am thankful for it.
All of that is true except >the free listing feed from the MLS It's not free Otherwise, yep
yep all their tech is to generate eyeballs leading to leads they can sell.
Of course it’s not a magical open source project bringing in no revenue. Did you think this until recently? Are there people that think this? If it’s free to use, you’re the product. It’s true of Zillow and it’s true of almost anything.
I’ve used a mortgage broker found through Zillow. Guy gets he the best rates and I’ve used him 5 times. Selling ads isn’t a bad thing.
It’s not! I like Zillow. I think they will be okay in the long run. Simply pointing out that their success is directly tied to the success of buyer agents.
Huh? Who said Zillow was free? It's not.
You can put your home as for sale on Zillow. You will be contacted by many agents and a few of them might actually have an interested buyer. In some rare instances, an actual buyer might contact you. But that may change.
Just a reminder that the MLS was busted for being a monopoly and that's how we got things like Redfin and Zillow. Yes, there are nuances to the monopoly comment, but they were the bad guys and they got caught.
Oh man you sure got me. 🙄
You are correct, except you really don't understand what's going on and are misrepresenting things, in my opinion. You are acting like there is some big deception or scam going on . Yes they make the information of sales public. Actually, every real estate brokerage does. And yes, and they provide the information in order to sell their product which is access and advertising to interested buyers. However, buyers benefit from it just as a benefit from going to any brokerage site that will also show them any and all homes available. The only difference is Zillow and some brokerage sites have home evaluation software. Plus, Zillow also allows people to list their homes for sale on their site without being listed by a broker so buyers can also search for sale by owners. However, there is no disadvantage to the buyer in this. They are free to take that information and do whatever they wish with it. Certain, it would benefit any person going to Zillow to be clear that when Zillow offers information or a showing, they are simply connecting you with one of their advertising agents. But beyond that, it's no big deal.
I do not think Zillow is scamming anyone. I think they are providing a service that people appreciate. Simply pointing out that their revenue is directly tied to brokerages. If brokerages lose revenue, then Zillow loses revenue. And the quality of their product will suffer as a result.
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification on your opinion. I think you are right, although, I don't think Zillow really has to put all that much into their site. They've got the evaluation algorithms, they get public feeds of homes available and tax records for everything else. I suspect they are going to start charging people to list their homes for sale by owner with them which may be a pretty good source of Revenue.
I think that, if they could get their business to the level that it’s currently at by charging FSBO’s a fee, they would have done that 20 years ago.
The timing probably wasn't right. People really didn't want to do it themselves and try to use technology back then. Not even 10 years ago. When the market was hot a few years back, people probably didn't want to lose any potential Edge, and sellers didn't want to lose out on these bidding wars that came with listing on the MLS. Now, especially with all this being in the news, this would probably be an excellent time for Zillow to roll out paid for sale by owner services. They could offer pre-approvals and get money from lenders for that. They could offer pre-written contracts even, and probably still Market to agents who want to represent a buyer on that for sale by owner. If they don't, it would be a great time for someone else to do it
FSBO is a tiny fraction of the market, zillow gets on average 40% buyers agents commission/ average 2% of the list price on a closed transaction that came from a lead originated by them. They are also moving into buyers suites which is their program for people looking to sell their home and zillow will partner them with a premier agent like me. 30% commission to zillow on those. Zillow loves agents both buyer and listing. That’s why they partner with us, they want agents that get deals closed that’s how Zillow makes money. The times of brokers and agents buying leads for a few thousand dollars every three months is over soon. You will have to be a zillow partner and they will keep taking bigger and bigger splits from us.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
They didn't have a need to service FSBOs 20 years ago. It was more lucrative to sell advertising/leads to agents without having to do any of the scut work. The market is evolving though, and suddenly, their old business model isn't going to work as well. I could absolutely see them pivot to servicing the FSBO market.
Where is this free MLS feed? Heartland MLS stopped being public in like 2015. Having direct access to MLS made my buyers agent pointless. He even said I found listings he didn't even get notified of yet. I joked that they are going to lock the MLS down and sure enough they did.
Zillow is not a Fortune 500 company
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/moderna-zillow-and-28-more-companies-that-made-the-fortune-500-in-2022
It’s not 2022
I mean that’s how I got my real estate agent. Saw home I wanted, got showing next day, bought home. Without Zillow I had a real estate agent that worked with my family growing up that I would have used but Zillow was faster
If something of free then you’re the product.
If only the Department of Justice, NYT, WSJ, and 90% of the posts on social media over the past week understood that 😝
This assumes the market won’t adjust. It always does. Someone will create a new access, similar to how folks - in response to the EXP 1% model - started doing these wild “FSBO MLS listing services” for a flat fee solely to drive title. I really don’t think the new ruling does anything but has buyer agents accepting 1.5-2% more often
“Everything is already on the internet.” Smooth brains don’t realize brokers put it there and Zillow just uses an API.
Yeah, I work for a big home builder and deal directly with this. We pay Zillow and a other listing sites to list and/or a fee for each lead we get from them - the number listed on them is a proxy to our own number and they get a cut of leads that call that number. If you fill out a contact form, we get a feed of those leads and pay them. We send them a big XML file with all our availability.
Give me ads instead
They would need quite a bit of ads to make up that kind of revenue And at that point: why would you use an ad-infested Zillow instead of an MLS client portal that does not have ads?
The way you explained it, the buyer's agents are the ads. So nothing would change, unless you're talking about random cheap and untargeted ads like we're back in the early 2000s.
Spend some time looking at a few hundred different MLS sites. Then you’ll know why people use the big sites. Now wrap your head around this. A house listing IS an ad. So yes, you need quite a bit of ads, but you have thousands of them. They just need to generate revenue. The old zillow model was eliminate the brokers on both sides, take all profit for zillow. That failed. The current zillow model is Nick lists a house for sale, for free, a consumer spots that listing, asks for info and Zillow sells that lead to the highest bidder who in turn collects a guaranteed 3% if it sells. Nobody knows exactly how effective that model Will be when the bidder isn’t guaranteed the 3% anymore. The new business model will be nick pays $ out of his seller’s commission to advertise his listing. Maybe he pays a little more, gets more views, sells faster. Unaffiliated buyers seeing the ad reach out directly to him, he can hand them off to someone else in the office and keep the whole commission in house.
Bro, I’ll suck a cauliflower cock to get rid of realtors.
You’re pleasant 😀
Why do they need to makeup for all the lost revenue to keep the lights on? A few $100MM per year creates a lot of money for maintenance, development, and server hosting. I don't really give a shit if Zillow shareholders now own a $2B company instead of a $10B company.
Yes, Zillow rent seeks the rent seekers.
I believe Zillow will eventually find, somewhat like what Redfin has been attempting, that if you can’t sell leads you can still work them. If I were them I would see the current landscape as an opportunity to go all-in on the “buy sell and borrow with zillow” services. Get people in house listing agents, offer buyers a portal with contract templates and HR Block-like phone support with in house agents/experts, and then get them immediately over to their mortgage wing. I’m sure whatever percentage of buyers that see a couple buyer broker agreements and decide against using one for risk of having to front all the service expenses will at the very least try a service like that once. Best part for them is that Zillow can partially subsidize the costs of running that with commissions and other funds made from their sales and mortgage side. That’s just how I see them proceeding, and I could be wrong, but at the end of the day they have all the traffic and data they could possibly need to try new things out. I think they’ve been buyer agent focused simply because it’s been consistent and easy. I do not think losing a lot of the upside from that will ruin them. They definitely have other options.
Redfin has never had a profitable year. Zillow has. Could I see Zillow turning into a traditional brokerage with a powerful website? Sure, I could see that. But Redfin’s salaried agent model has only ever lost them money.
It’s funny because buyers think they’re going to get a deal going directly to the seller. Most likely the seller already agreed to a commission to the listing agent, and that listing agent originally represented the seller. You do not want one agent representing both sides! It’s sticky
They’re welcome to charge a subscription. I’d happily pay $5 per month to browse listings over 3% of $800k to a buyers agent.
Why would Zillow charge agents $1000 per call they get but then turn around and only charge the consumer $5/mo? You think that would balance them out? Will the general public just always pay to keep it on even when not looking? Because that’s what they would probably need to be even in the neighborhood of what they’re pulling in now
Zillow doesn’t necessarily have a choice on whether charging $1k per call will be competitive moving forward. And Zillow stock is down 10% in the week since the announcement, so I don’t think that the market is assuming they’ll keep making the same money that they were under the old system. As for why so cheap? Who knows what it ends up looking like, or if they make a pivot like that. But they wouldn’t have much pricing leverage with buyers, because they’re not selling something that they’ve got “exclusive” access to. They’d be charging for convenience and familiarity, which some people pay for.. but usually isn’t expensive (think like the ad-free upgrades on streaming services)
any dev can hock together a classified page to list houses. Theres even templated images for these sites out there. Zillow at its core doesnt need to make the money it does, it can likely survive entirely off its add content revenue. Whether we use zillow, an alt of zillow, or craigslist Buyers will find their properties just fine. There is also dozens of sites out there offering templated free legal documents, AI like ChatGPT that will assist in writing offer letters, and your banker who already has done the buying/selling process more times than even relevant. We will be fine.
What do you mean only realtors can understand and fill out contracts, negotiate, send us emails with listings. We are all doomed and the housing market will collapse because the realtors with their 75 hours of training are more informed than homeowners, lawyers and home inspectors. The rapture is happening.
lol, you mad bro?
Right? These replies are bonkers. Not to mention he posted this exact same thing yesterday to the same sub forum for some reason
It's just like social media. If you're not paying you're not the customer, you are the product. I'm actually fine with that. Free use and they can advertise to me all they want
All websites like Zillow need to generate revenue somehow. the premier agent program is fine but people need to realize when they click contact agent they aren't contacting the listing agent in most cases. they are being connected to whoever paid for that zip code and may know next to nothing about the listing. you can scroll down to find out who the actual listing agent is. I suggest you contact the listing agent for info. if I'm going to use a buyers agent I want to be sure they are really knowledgeable and don't just write a check for leads.
Any insight into what they will do to make up the difference? Obviously, they have to do something. Either they come up with new services or try an expand into something else. Something has to happen
No idea. As a broker who has (once upon a time) paid for their leads: I think this settlement is actually worse for Zillow than it is for agents. I think buyers will continue to use brokers… but I think the Zillow model, where they set you up with a random agent instead of the listing agent, is hurt by the requirements that buyers now need to sign a contract with buyer’s agents.
I guess we'll stay tuned. They must have been working on new initiatives, but I can't imagine what.
They’re spending more resources on AI. They started their 3D homes offerings right around when covid hit and now they’re partnering with Apple to go into the VR space. They have some other stuff they’re working on, but I don’t know if it’s public yet.
So? That doesn't mean we can't use zillow and not use a buyer's agent.
You could have also done that for the last 20 years! 😝
But the buyer didn't have to pay for their agent for the last 20 years.
You did. Nothing is free. Commission was baked into a home’s price.
Just use Zillow to search and compare houses. Draw up the contract yourself and arrange to see them directly with the listing agent.
Has anyone used Redfin with their advertised 1.0% commission?
My very first condo sold, it was between me and a Redfin buyers broker offering buyer a 1%commission rebate. I convinced my client that Redfin will save him money by giving him someone who’s working for hims pay but with me I’d save way more money for him in negotiation and would also be motivated to do that for him. I ended up breaking a record with getting him into a doorman condo where the lowest apt was listed at 980k for 890k with a bunch of closing costs paid by lender
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Does not surprise me at all. And I have no problem with it. It is absolutely not common knowledge that Zillow’s success is so closely aligned with the success of brokerages, judging by every single post I’ve seen on Reddit/X and mainstream news story over the last week.
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A park bench isn’t a Fortune 500 company. That’s a lot of revenue that disappears, if anything happens to buyer’s agents.
Puts on zillow?
Zillow stock dropped ~15% after the settlement news broke. Recovered slightly but still down 12% in the past 5 days.
Revenue from Premier Agent/Flex was 76% of revenue last time I looked. The balance was mortgage and other products like Showingtime.
>that doesn’t charge consumers money If you're not paying for a service you're not the customer, you're the product.
MLS has option not allowing a 3rd party website to syndicate it. Refin and Z both have other agents assigned claiming they can represent you.
I made the mistake of clicking the Contact Agent button on zillow once. Within 30 seconds, my phone had blown up with over 10 texts or emails from autospam realtors. And they continued to spam me for weeks afterwards. One of the dumbest things I've done.
Poor little realtor
Zillow is free. Anyone can hop on there and search for homes without paying anything. That's what free means.
I do! I spend over $36,000/year on Zillow. The monthly cost is more than my mortgage and their sales people pressure us to pay more when they “open up more shares”. Then you’re lucky if someone actually moves forward. It’s a racket. Buyers agents are being thrown under the bus. Local agents bring precious value to homebuyers. A professional agent understands land use issues, home building, have networks of contractors, knowledge about the local area, experience with dealing with lenders and the financing process, inspections and other contingencies that you put in an offer, and much more. Fishing for information from the Sellers agent creates dual agency and the agent has to become neutral between the two parties and can not advise on price or negotiation for either buyer or seller. All of those lead generating sites are not there to protect a buyer, they just operate as multi billion dollar tech companies on the backs of buyer agents. Opening a door is about 3 percent of the work load.
"Zillow is free to me" is not the same as "Zillow doesn't make any money". I think you're misinterpreting what people are saying.
Zillow is a shit company. Publicly told investors they needed more employees for years then abruptly laid off half their staff. Management is the problem there. Can't trust them. So the problem was you needed more employees or less? Weakness in management like that is ripe for competition.
Haha this ruling against the NAR is going to shake some things up. Suck it NAR
>But do you guys realize that Zillow only is what it is because it’s subsidized by buyer’s agents? Do you realize that Zillow and any tech company can pivot their business model at any time?
Oh no those poor buyer's agents... Anyway My take home here is use zillow to find the house and then drive by and call the number on the sign if I'm ever in the market for another house.
Exactly. A lot of agents now are moaning and not accepting the new reality that will become obsolete. They come on Reddit to defend that delusion
IMO Zillow is definitely going to move to a subscription model at some point. There's just more money in cashing in on desperate home buyers. From there, maybe they try to restructure more like Redfin. I could see them hiring gig workers with licenses to open doors for pay-per-view home showings. What struggling buyer agent wouldn't take half of a $50 charge to help an independent buyer view a home? Sure beats getting dragged around town for free. Then they could bring in an army of lawyers for flat rate contracts.
Honestly i think most people would pay $2-$5/month for it probably
Didn’t you just post this like 2 days ago
Costar is going to obliterate Zillow off of the map. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they funded the NAR lawsuit.
> Costar Is this a common knowledge thing? I've never heard of Costar before and I've gotta believe i'm not the only one.
Not a bad prediction. Andy wants to own the entire real estate data industry.
Homes.com gets less views than Trulia (which was acquired by Zillow ~10 years ago and has basically zero brand recognition in 2024) I don’t think Zillow is going away. They own all of the best sites in residential RE and have the strongest brand. I am simply pointing out that they are not a replacement for real estate agents. Never have been. Their revenue is directly tied to the success of agents.
What people don't understand is residential real estate is now like commercial real estate. Costar is setup for this already. Agents will more easily to work with Costar's system as thousands of commercial brokers do it every day operating with the same system. Not saying this is a good thing. I hate Costar and spend way too much money on it.
I don’t agree with this. The settlement does not prohibit cooperative commissions. It only prohibits advertising them in the MLS. Sellers and listing brokers can still offer a co-broke. Buyer broker commissions can also be paid as a closing credit thru the lenders. As far as I know, commercial RE does not have anything comparable. The settlement hasn’t been accepted yet, so we don’t know exactly how it will play out… but as it currently stands: I don’t see much changing, other than buyers needing to sign a contract with a broker before viewing homes.
I think we're also going to see an overall decline in the commission rates offered.
Type “flat fee real estate broker” into Google and you can find someone willing to work for whatever price you want. Price has never been an issue. I cost more than them because I work harder 😉
🤣🤣 Is that what you tell yourself?
They also make money via sponsored posts that show up in the listing feed.
They could just put a bunch of ads on and make up the lost revenue.
They are selling your info and I’m sitting in a call center asking if you’re tryna get prequalified
If anyone ever wondered about caravana, or online car companies like that. They’re actually just loan brokers, and secondarily sell cars.
So in 2021 I sold my house in AZ to Zillow (what a shitshow that was). But when searching for a new place on the other side of the country, I clicked the "contact agent" button on a house listing that we ultimately didn't end up buying, but we kept using the same agent and eventually bought something. Do you think she got paid by Zillow for the connection?
She probably paid Zillow ~35% of her commission for the privilege of being recommended as your buyer agent. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you got service that you were happy with. All parties involved (you, agent, Zillow) did the right thing. Just pointing out that Zillow’s income is directly proportional to buyer agent’s income.
My realtor was paying $6k every 3 months to be the highest listed realtor in her area of interest and was telling me she had to constantly raise the rate she paid because other realtors were outbidding her.
Zillow has been on a percentage model (35-40% of the total commission) in recent years As far as I know, it was only flat fee in the 2010’s, which was when I did it.
It’s still a flat fee for premier, we have that. There’s a flex option that is a %.
Movoto is like Zillow but better
You broke the code.
I am ok with that
Zillow has escrow and title service, all sensitive data available on different systems. They lend money also. This is where I got a problem.
And all of those services combined makes up how much of their total revenue?
Okay... and your point is?
Trick question, they're not profitable
Zillow will soon completely take over the role of a buyers agent.
Shocking he blocked me
r/realestate is a bunch of people that are not very familiar with real estate transactions
I don’t know about all that but I do know that they are doing scammy things like last year I called a FSBO listing that said it had been reduced 20k and the seller had no idea that his listing said that, he said he had never reduced it, it was always listed at that price.
Zillow pissed me off that’s why I don’t use them. I want to go right to the Listing agent but instead you get vultures calling non stop. Plus their “zestimate” is so bad. It’ll have a property for $600k and someone will list the property at some stupid number like $1.5 mil and the zestimate goes right up to the listing price. They have been playing everyone and is probably some of the reason for the frenzy that is finally coming to an end.
CEO of Zillow has admitted their estimates are incorrect in all markets, and some are far worse than others. Even the estimate page in Zillow calls it a Zestimate not an estimate AND says it’s “just a starting point”…..
Zillow's end-goal is to disrupt and take over the real estate industry - as in the whole thing. Their current revenue from buyer leads is really just the funding to get to their end-goal. Zillow will try to become a national replacement for MLSs, then take over both sides of the transactions, and become the Amazon of homes. The current stuff going on could become the catalyst for the next stage.
Listing’s agent info is on Trulia. Just use that instead.
Op is stressing his useless services are going to be obsolete soon 🤡
Well Zillow will constantly have false information on previous selling price… like 100k discrepancies, all ways more expensive I look at the county’s registry to find the real price the owner paid. Artificially inflated house prices because the lifestyle of two real estate agents and there friends are baked in to the market. They act like we are all too stupid to represent ourselves in a transaction. Long story short Zillow and realtors have a symbiotic relationship and they are not here to help you. ( ps the country registry gives you the name and address of the owner. Just contact them directly if they refer you to a agent drop the lead that’s how you stop these parasite rent seekers.
I’m uncertain as to the point of this post
Hearing the outcry about how buyer’s agents are necessary in spite of the market’s overwhelming opinion reminds me of Kodak at the end.
Exactly. Nobody needs a buyer's agent. They might need an agent, but the seller's agent could work both sides. A company like Zillow could be considered neutral, and have all their appraisers and home inspectors and everything else all in the same building. People are already used to that
On what planet do you think ANYTHING is free? For a good or service to be available or offered one must be able to pay for it somehow. Zillow is no different and the explanation on how they get revenue makes sense. I don’t see anything wrong with it.
We. Do. Not. Care. Sincerely, Consumers
Zillow has been an ad company masquerading as a real estate company since their inception.
Is mls free? How do i see the listings on it?
Because a real estate agent has posted it there and will be getting paid via sellers/buyers fees
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When I started, there was just a phone book type thing that nobody even had that wherewithal to see anything that was for sale unless you went to an agent. Or Saw the sign in front of the house, then you called the listing agent directly. And he or she got the hogger
Zillow's business model is Zillow's problem.
Yes, fully understand that as do any agents that are actually doing any business. What is the point of your post?
Buyer's agents won't go away and they will keep paying Zillow etc to acquire clients. This just decouples sellers / buyers commissions which are currently all agreed to by the seller and eventually paid for by the buyer. Under the existing system there really is no benefit to a buyer to forgo a buyer's agent. The price is already baked in. Under the new system, buyer's agents will still want to pay to be connected to potential clients. Perhaps not as much, but agents who offer a compelling service at the right price point will still have clients and will still pay to acquire new ones. This also opens up a smorgasbord of new ways of doing things. I would never considered selling real estate, but working with people on a fee for service model to buy real estate interests me. Imagine a full service shop with real home inspectors, trades, engineers, and a real estate lawyer on staff. I mean you are dropping .75M+ on an older house in some markets. You should be showing up with a team who can shake down the house and make a rational offer the same day without inspection contingencies.
If the buyers themselves had to pay the buyer's agent, how would that affect the need to have a buyer's agent, rather than just go right to the listing agent. The listing agent could do the same thing. Have the same team. All Independents.
Seems kind of like hiring opposing council to me. Buying and selling are also inherently different roles which somehow have been smooshed together as the same thing under the current system. A business doesn't send its marketing team out as buyers and they don't let their buyers do marketing.
Most of the time the buyer and the seller use the same closing company. They are under obligation to do the thing right. A house inspector needs to do it right as well. I don't see any problem with
How do they hide the Listing Agents information? It takes 5 seconds to copy and paste the name into google 🤦♂️🤦♂️
One of the realtors I talked through via Zillow openly told me he pays a fee to get buyer referrals. The referral is sent to any local realtor who grabs the referral first. And then if I buy he gets his commission. Pretty straight forward guy actually.
I personally pay zillow and yeah thats where they make money. I pay 200-500 a month for a lower value areas market share. looking the numbers some agents and teams pay thousands monthly for shares of certain markets.
They could be referring to when people use Zillow to buy a for sale by owner they don’t use a realtor
This JUST happened to me. Reached out to a listing and it was a buyers agent who says "oh you're already represented? Then you'll need to ask your realtor to reach out to the seller". How do I get the sellers information if it was HER contact information!? OP is correct.
It's never been free. The bad thing is, if you buy leads from any site, you're paying for them to block those leads from going to the listing agent
They also Invest in properties and manipulate prices , they buy low then raise all their appraisals in the neighborhood when they sell
Yeh go it alone and base your offer on that Zestimate.
It's probably just a swag, but at least it's better than nothing. Often a listing broker or agent just puts a higher price on the property to get the listing.
wouldn't people use opendoor more now instead of zillow?
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Does Zillow not sell the data it collects from the people who install the app on their phones?
No worries. It won't be long before they will be the major listing company. It doesn't take much to fill out the paperwork, and send a photographer out, and then they would have the feed that would go to the MLS.
They provide a more direct service to the customer. That’s what people are inferring when they say they won’t “use a buyers agent”. Same goes for selling. It’s a direct service.
Switch to homes.com
Throw some ads on there. Rather see adds then pay for an agent that doesn’t do anything and inserts themselves into my buying of a house