Should You Be Advertising Your Listings on Zillow?

In the months following its merger with Trulia, Zillow Group is looking to cash in on the benefits of its former rival. Currently, 63 percent of new real estate listings are from existing Zillow advertisers, but the megalithic realty site wants more. Over the next several years, it will be making its play for your real estate listing advertising dollars job number one – to the tune of spending about $100 million this year to grow its audience. Are you game?

The benefits:

Unlike most broker sites which feature only local MLS listings, Zillow has close to complete coverage in most markets, including every property – not just those for sale or rent. This is a huge boon to buyers searching by neighborhood, giving them access to nearly 100 percent of property data versus the roughly 3 percent of homes listed on the MLS. With the addition of Trulia, the benefits are even greater, including consumer – not agent driven – information such as neighborhood crime maps and crime density as well as a far more robust offering of data on schools, market trends, past sales, and more.

The drawbacks:

Aside from the most obvious, including inaccurate 'Zestimates,' incorrect data, and paying for the leads garnered from your own Zillow listings, Zillow is far from a real estate listing advertising utopia. Barclays cites slowing web traffic growth resulting from market saturation as a long-term concern, and Zillow's termination of agreement with ListHub in April hasn't helped matters, resulting in declined listings following the dissolution, putting Zillow behind Realtor.com as it attempts to duplicate ListHub's comprehensive and accurate real estate listing advertising database. The merger itself has also sent customers on the hunt for alternatives.

What about industry-favored Realtor.com?

Realtor.com offers fair competition, but lags behind its gargantuan rival. This past March, Zillow and Trulia had 75.4 million unique visitors, making it the most-trafficked real estate listing advertising website network. Realtor.com, the industry favorite, came in at less than half, 32.6 million. Though not as trafficked, the site does have benefits, among which are more accurate listing information and timely updates of listing status – at least according to Realtor.com (aka MOVE, Inc.).

How Google plays in

Google's 2014 algorithmic change further muddies the waters. Though Zillow pays well for dominance in real estate listing advertising search results, the algorithmic change gives local search results – and local brokers – priority. Once local brokerage websites catch up to Zillow in quantity of data, the big fish might be in trouble. Data availability is increasing as web development costs decrease, making the market ripe for competition by these brokerages. Time will tell if sites like Zillow fall by the wayside to local agencies far preferred by home buyers and sellers.

The takeaway

Should you be advertising your listings on Zillow? More than 90 percent of home buyers use the internet to search for homes, so you should definitely be listing online. However, you may want to wait for the growing pains to subside before you invest your hard earned real estate listing advertising dollars in Zillow. Today's fickle technology users don't have a whole lot of brand loyalty, which may pose a challenge to a mega-giant in a market where, all things equal, consumers prefer a local business over a national firm that serves customers up to the highest bidder.

To view the original article, visit the Properties Online blog.