There are a lot of people in our industry who love to hate Zillow. I get it. I was in that camp too.
Our agents work incredibly hard to get listings and represent their clients. Then Zillow takes those listings, puts them in front of the public, generates clients from them, and in many cases sells those clients back to the industry for a referral fee.
There is something about that which understandably rubs people the wrong way.
But before we place all the blame on Zillow, I think we need to look at what led to the rise of this “beast” in the first place.
Part of the answer is our own inability as an industry to unify and collaborate. The fragmentation of our MLSs and boards created an opening. And into that vacuum, Zillow stepped in and built the consumer experience we didn’t.
Now the cat is out of the bag.
Zillow created an experience our industry wasn’t able to create collectively, consumers embraced it, and today Zillow has become the dominant consumer search portal in residential real estate.
So you may be asking:
If Zillow is the beast, why in the hell did we choose to embrace them?
The answer isn’t because we suddenly love Zillow.
It’s because strategy isn’t about liking the battlefield. It’s about understanding the battlefield you’re actually on.
And fortunately or unfortunately, our battle isn’t with Zillow.
Our battle is with our competitors.
Every listing appointment. Every recruiting appointment. Every opportunity to get in front of a client. We aren’t competing against Zillow for that business. We’re competing against another agent and another brokerage.
So the question shouldn’t be, “Do we like Zillow?”
The question should be:
“Can we use the ecosystem Zillow has already built to create an advantage for our agents and our clients?”
Something very interesting happened recently that I think many of us may have slept through. Compass and Anywhere chose to align their pre-market strategy with Redfin.
Now, I think Redfin is a fine platform. There is no reason to diminish them here. But the reality is that Redfin reaches a fraction of the consumer audience Zillow does.
And that creates an interesting strategic opening.
Just as Zillow once took advantage of a competitive landscape our industry helped lay out for them, we now have an opportunity to take advantage of the landscape being laid out in front of us.
Compass has made its choice.
We should make ours.
Today, when one of our First Team agents walks into a listing presentation against an agent carrying a Compass, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA, Christie’s or Sotheby’s business card, we can offer that seller something their competitor cannot: access to a substantially larger consumer audience during the critical pre-market period.
Our Zillow Preview listings are generating nearly five times the views of comparable pre-market listings on Redfin.
That is a competitive advantage.
Our industry spends an enormous amount of emotional energy being angry at Zillow. Meanwhile, Compass is actively competing with us for agents, listings, market share and, ultimately, control of inventory.
And to be clear, I don’t fault Compass for that either.
They’re doing what they were built to do. They have been very public about their ambition to capture significant market share in the country’s major markets.
I simply think they made a strategic mistake by aligning their pre-market inventory with a platform that reaches a smaller consumer audience.
And I’m perfectly willing to exploit that mistake.
So we at First Team Real Estate, a strong, independent brokerage, decided to get into bed with the beast.
Not because we love Zillow.
Not because we’ve forgotten the history.
And certainly not because we think Zillow exists to protect the brokerage industry.
We did it for one reason: to give our agents and our clients the biggest competitive advantage we can when it comes to pre-marketing their listings.
Sometimes strategy requires taking the emotion out of the equation.
You understand the battlefield. You understand who you’re actually competing against. You look at the assets available to you.
And then you use the ecosystem that exists to serve your agents and your clients.
You can be angry at the beast.
Or you can put the beast to work.
