Zillow last week added a number of new and exciting features to their website, most of which are designed to transition Zillow from an online research tool, to becoming a true community web site; and what may well be the next real estate Ueber Site.
I had a long telephone conversation Friday with Drew Meyers of Zillow. Our real estate company,
Bravo Brokers, is surprisingly enough currently Zillow's #2 poster of listings - surpassed only by ZIP Realty at this time.
Naturally, our discussion centered around various marketing programs Zillow has going, to help us get more visibility on Zillow.com for our local market areas; but we also talked a little bit about their new service offerings and Zillow's goal to become a true community website.
To this end, here is a brief synopsis of Zillows new features:
- Zillow EZ Ads
EZ ads are a low cost way to fun small banner ads (a square sized ad displayed at the top right side of each pageview), and that are targeted by ZIP code. The cost is 1 cent per display/page view.
This is not only a great opportunity for agents to run small budget, geo targeted campaigns, but they also lend themselves to home sellers looking to give their home some added exposure. Setting up an ad literally takes 3 minutes and you set your budget, decide on ZIP Code/s and off you go. Online reporting shows number of page views and click through's.
- Report Homes for Sale
Any user can now report any home that is for sale (but not listed for sale on Zillow) as such.
- User Comments
Any user can now post comments on homes (for sale or not), as well as on neighborhoods. Users can also ask/post questions that then in turn can be answered by any other user.
The idea here is to create a public forum in which the public can discuss and comment on homes and neighborhoods.
Personally, I think the idea is brilliant. As some may know, Redfin some time ago hired bloggers and is posting 'reviews' of open houses on their blog. The challenge with their approach is that in different markets this may violate MLS/Board rules, plus some may suggest bias in the reporting. By taking this approach to a public forum and in essence allowing anyone to comment on any property, this truly opens up possibilities.
No-one knows for sure what Zillow's long term strategy is. Some suggest they may want to establish the first defacto national "MLS". In any event, their early success is self evident. In less than a year they have grown to become the #3 real estate website with millions of users per month and it does not seem far fetched at all that Zillow may surpass Realtor.com at some point.
We continue to monitor Zillow closely and Bravo is committed to giving exposure to all of its full service listings on Zillow.com.
