Has anyone had any experience with Zillow advertising? good / bad?

I notice Zip Realty advertises fairly heavy on there.....

recommend you review Zillow's business plan. A good outline was published by Realty Times. In short it is to get real estate agents to pay the cost of removing real estate agents from transactions. Yes... you pay them to develop a system where they sale you leads in the short term along with all your competition and then the long term is they move into the transaction itself removing agents from the process.

Go ahead and pay for junk leads from people who looked at incorrect values on zillows web engine... should be fun???

I know... "My home is worth $1,485,000. I'd like to list with you." Uhhhhh...Last comp is $1,199,000. I hate zillow, and I don't understand AGENTS who actually use it. I will use it to see what consumers are potentially reading, so I can be prepared.
--A

I'm not so convinced that that is the future intention of this site.

I believe it is simply a site people will use as entertainment more so than to get their actual values. What I do see is that people will use it as a portal to finding: Realtors, Contractors, Appraisers, Lenders etc.... Zillow has no intention of hiring brokers in every state. They are a ad revenue company.

You guys seem to have the sky is falling mentality towards Zillow, you should be more concerned about the amount of competition from the increase in the shear numbers of realtors and the discounters.

Obviously, it does not appear there is anyone on this board that has any experience advertising on there.....

Sky is falling mentality? Not me. I just think they are grossly inaccurate and can't account for things that determine fair market value in a market, let alone today's market.
That's all.
--A

I have zillow integrated on my website so I can give people a free home estimate. My clients love it. Zillow is not going to get into the real estate brokerage business, they are an ad based revenue company just like Google.

jg, so you mean that you give people a free home estimate based on what zillow says? What if they decide to list with you but zillow has given an overinflated estimate? Don't you lose face when you write the listing agreement and have to tell them you don't believe that is the fair market value? Or do you just run with it?
--A

Zillow's 2nd stage plan IS to replace real estate brokerages with an automated buyer seller coordination service... READ the Realty Times article...

1st stage is to have agents fund the work by selling leads to anyone that will pay for them... even leads you attract for them...

Let me ask you this, DO YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ?

Realty Times is a freaking joke! that stupid B&*^H who is the editor will write whatever someone with PAY her to write!!!!!!! They stay in business because of the people who PAY to advertise there. If you think Realty Times is an objective unbias compitent Real Estate web site, you need to open your eyes.

People will always need to look someone in the eye they trust before signing away or purchasing something so big in their lives....

Let's just assume Zillow does do what you say, they will not be able to open doors or answer questions about particular properties, like agents do.

What IS happening is the continuous cheapening of the real estate agent. Commissions are coming down not because of Zillow but because of COMPETITION and THE PUBLICS VIEW OF HOW MUCH WORK IS ACTUALLY BEING DONE BY THE AGENTS!!! Zillow, if they do what you say is just a small part of the evolution of what is happening on a much bigger scale.

Zillow doesn't know what they've gotten themselves into.

Just don't advertise on their site and they won't be able to afford to stay in business. If they want to open up a brokerage or provide services... fine... more power to them. But if they want agents to pay them for leads or advertising in order to place more work on brokers... no thanks.

It's all about consumer perception. People tend to think in "conceptual" terms rather then details which is why it is easy for a company like Zillow to get market buzz. It's the execution that's the hard part and where they will ultimately fail for the very reasons you stated.

Drew from Zillow here -- I just wanted to clarify the point that we have no plans to become agents to buy/sell houses. We are a media company with an advertising business model.

With regard to our inaccuracies, we are trying to be transparent by providing a Data Accuracy page and know accuracy will vary by location- http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm.

Please let me know if you have further questions you would like clarified.

Drew,

Maybe you'd like to share with us how Zillow plans to make money as a media company and how you see things developing for your company within the next 2-3 years.

Zillow has actually done something unique. Who cares if their estimates are correct or not, that isn't the point. The point is they are 1. driving traffic to their site 2. driving targeted traffic to their site 3. driving more than likely potental home seller to their site.

They indeed have more incentive to be a media company. They have figured out a way to beat realtors to getting their foot in the door. The KEY is getting to people first. The stats show, 70+% of people use the first agent they come in contact with via email or in person!

So Zillow now has a revenue stream from real estate companies for advertising, just as google or yahoo does on paid searches.

BUT!!!! WAIT it gets better. One of the biggest challenges for marketing is GEOGRAPHIC targeting, something mass media has yet to get. Zillow is having the advertisee plug in their zip code for them. Now they can better serve the agents right down to the particular town they are in. Google and Yahoo is still a crap shoot....

Homeowners are the biggest consumers of durable goods, guess what, HOME DEPOT and LOWES!! So the consumer figures out they can't get what they want for their home. They stay there and improve!!!

This will prove to be much more profitable than trying to sell leads to agents. We all know how much of a bad rap Housevalues and Homegain has, why in the world would Zillow want to step in that armpit of competition....?

I guess truth in advertising and accuracy does not matter, as long as the bucks flow in.
http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm. (link provided by Zillow)
Welcome to another and new way of ripping people off.

Broker- While I can't go into any specifics as to what we are planning, I can say our product right now is only the first step towards empowering consumers with tools and information relevant to the home buying & selling process. As a media company, we are focused on making money via advertising. All the reports we have seen seem to show a large shift of advertising dollars from print to online and we think there is a market for us to succeed, especially given what Rick Mense posted about advertisers being able to target consumers at the city or ZIP code level.

Pikes Peak- I did not mean to imply that accuracy does not matter to us, because it does. I simply meant that we are not trying to deceive people into thinking we are accurate everywhere. The value range on a Zestimate is one way of showing consumers how confident we are in the calculated Zestimate for a particular home. We are working to improve our accuracy in a couple of ways. 1) improving the actual algorithm we use to calculate the Zestimates and 2) adding further data to our databases.

Let me know if there are other questions that need clarifying.

Drew,

Thanks. I guess we'll have to wait to see what Zillow provides and what thier true intentions are.

Last time I checked a Zestimate it came up with what the home just sold for. The problem was it sold for over 150000 over comps with no good comparisons available. Called the listing agent and asked how they got so much money and she stated she really didn't know. They got lucky and there were active listings in the price range at the time....What appraiser uses actives?!!
I think Zillow is a great idea, I wish I would have thought of it. But I would have big bold disclaimers everywhere. "PS Our analysis really doesn't mean anything. We pull comps out of the blue."

Regarding the original question. NO I have not advertised on Zillow and no I would not want to give them my money.

http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=134

http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=137

http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/?p=1493