How Zillow’s Policy Changes Affect Sellers and Homebuyers

We wanted to take a moment to share something important that has been unfolding in the real estate world. It affects how your information is handled online and how your home is marketed if you decide to sell.

Recently, an internal Zillow strategic document surfaced that revealed something surprising.  (see "Zillow wants to punish the agent")  Zillow has considered suppressing or removing listings for both agents and sellers who choose to market a home outside of their platform. In other words, if a seller and their agent select a marketing plan that does not center Zillow, the listing may not be shown or promoted the way you would expect. Every seller deserves the right to choose the marketing strategy that best serves them, not the one that best serves an advertising company.

Zillow also updated its privacy policy to allow cross platform data matching. (Zillow updates privacy policy) In some instances, if someone uses the same email on Zillow and with their agent, Zillow can connect that activity and build marketing profiles around them, including unsolicited marketing outreach. Your private conversations with us remain protected, but it is important that you have the full picture so you stay in control of your data.

There is another piece most people never hear about. When we prepare a home for sale, we handle the photography, marketing and listing materials at our own cost. Zillow collects that data and imagery at no cost to them and places it on their site. To appear prominently as the listing agent on our own listings, Zillow charges significant placement fees. If we do not pay those fees, Zillow sends buyer inquiries to agents who pay them for leads. Those agents may be paying Zillow up to forty percent of their commission. For sellers, this can mean paying a buyer agent commission for a buyer who might have come directly to us if Zillow had not intercepted the inquiry. Think about that. We (both Seller and Listing Agent) invest the time, resources and intention to bring a home to market, and Zillow profits from that work while charging thousands of dollars to participate in the visibility of the very listings we provide to them, free of charge.

If you want a cleaner and more private home search experience, two trustworthy alternatives are the Compass app and Homes.com. Both give you accurate data without aggressive advertising or tracking.

Compass app
https://www.compass.com/app

Homes.com
https://www.homes.com

If you have a Zillow account and prefer not to participate in their new data practices, you can delete your account or update your Zillow contact information with a lesser-used email address. We have a simple step by step guide available if you would like it.