Zillow agreement

Date the Agent, Marry the House.

May 01, 2024

Quick note: The commission landscape is changing and it’s time for teams and brokerages to either get rid of sh*tty agents - or turn them into skilled professionals to double your Average Transactions Per Agent (ATPA). Feel free to talk to our partner here.

Check this out:

Zillow being Zillow — undermining real estate professionals under false pretenses.

They really do NOT understand who WE are though... they do not scare me, annoy me… Yes, they do annoy me.

So... We agree that I'm showing you houses for the next week, and we agree that I'm not getting paid for this service. We also agree that you are not a customer and I'm not your agent. I'm not really sure what the point of this agreement is.

Why open doors for free for 7 days? Gas isn’t free, the babysitter isn’t free, and, at a minimum, neither should the time be free for doing it.

But NAR clarified this yesterday. We don’t have to have an Agency agreement — just a written agreement clearly laying out services, and fees for such services; this appears to satisfy that.

You know how people say all agents do is “open doors?” That’s exactly the service they are offering.

This agreement covers them so that these buyers can’t turn around and sue them for failing to provide any kind of advisement regarding their purchase. They’re literally just there to open the doors for them.

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming, that ruling weakened our individual powers (because we’ve yet to come together collectively to make a stand) and now entities like Zillow can have a field day trying to dilute our value.

They probably have a whole R&D budget to try new call-to-actions like this. They’re basically holding Realtor tryouts as if this is a high school varsity team.

What's to stop a buyer from doing a "7-day touring trial" going from agent to agent to get free service?

Anyway, all of our predictions came true — If you do not learn how to market yourself and you rely on 3rd party platforms like Zillow or others, you’ll be relegated to a life as a glorified doorman.

Best,

Alexa