There’s Redfin and Compass. Now we have Zillow and Keller Williams.
Two major real estate companies announced Tuesday a new partnership that will allow Keller Williams affiliates to sell upcoming properties on KW.com, Zillow and Trulia. This partnership is made possible by Zillow Preview, a new program created by the portal. It allows agents and their sellers to “pre-market” listings while complying with local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) rules, which dictate how long a listing can remain in Coming Soon status before it becomes active.
Gary Keller
In addition to Keller Williams, the initial group of companies with access to Zillow Preview includes REMAX, HomeServices of America, United Real Estate, and Side.
Agents can access Zillow Preview through their local brokers and are responsible for understanding and complying with local MLS rules for pre-marketing activities, the companies said in their announcement.
“We believe open markets best serve consumers,” Gary Keller, KW executive chairman and co-founder, said in a statement.
“Sellers should have the opportunity to reach the widest range of potential buyers if they wish, because broader exposure generally benefits homeowners,” Keller continued. “Sellers should always retain the right to set the parameters for how their home is marketed. Information, marketing plans, timing, viewing rules, offer management, and more. These decisions belong to the homeowner. Our job as professionals is to fully disclose and explain the options and let the seller decide.”
Zillow Preview listings receive “priority listing” in homebuyer search results and Saved Home Alerts, and feature broker branding. Listing agents will also have access to real-time property information to view, save, share, tour requests, and the opportunity to be the first point of contact for homebuyers requesting additional information.
There are also potential financial benefits, the announcement explained. When a qualified Zillow Preview Lead purchases a home with one of Zillow’s partner agents, the listing agent may receive a portion of Zillow’s revenue associated with that transaction.
Jeremy Waxman
Zillow CEO Jeremy Waxman said of the partnership, “KW continues to demonstrate its leadership with a commitment to both the agencies we work with and the consumers we serve.” “Through Zillow Preview, our affiliated agents can bring products to market faster, build initial momentum, and reach a broader audience without restricting access along the way.”
Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industrial development officer, said in a call with Inman that Zillow’s preview listings have been around “before we even entered MLS.”
“So brokers can send us a feed of these properties, or agents can enter them directly and have them appear on Zillow,” Samuelson added.
Preview listings do not require all the input fields included in the MLS listing. Rather, it includes the basics of what you would expect from a property that appears on a consumer real estate search platform.
Samuelson also noted that the product complies with MLS rules.
“MLSs around the country have slightly different rules, but all MLSs have rules, or almost all have rules, and those rules include things like requiring a listing to be submitted to a multiple listing service…The most common rule is…one business day of public marketing,” Samuelson said.
Some MLSs have rules that allow listings to remain in Coming Soon status for several weeks before being widely distributed.
“Whatever the local rules are, that’s the time for agents to put listings in preview to gauge demand and start generating excitement,” Samuelson said. “The whole point of this particular program is to make those listings available to everyone to the extent that the MLS allows it, agents choose to utilize it, and sellers choose to utilize it.”
Buyers can’t request a tour of a home in preview status until the end of the listing day, Samuelson said.
Accumulation of listing days may vary by local market.
Zillow Preview’s debut comes about two weeks after Compass International Holdings and Redfin announced a similar partnership that allows Compass-affiliated agencies to display their upcoming listings on Redfin.
However, there are some notable differences between the two partnerships.
Redfin has not disclosed any plans to expand the partnership beyond the Compass brand while the three-year agreement is in effect. The portal also agreed to remove days on market, price history and home valuation estimates from Compass’ upcoming listings.
The deal between Redfin and Compass also includes a mortgage component, with Redfin’s parent company Rocket currently serving as Compass International Holdings’ digital mortgage partner. Compass and Redfin are also not focused on MLS rules, and Compass CEO Robert Refkin continues to advocate a fundamentally different listing system built on the domestic MLS.
The upcoming entry of Zillow (which is in a lawsuit with Compass over the brokerage’s three-tier marketing strategy) into the listing game is likely to add to a deepening industry conversation about listing data, access, and distribution.
Russ Cofano, an industry strategist and co-founder of Alloy Advisors, recently told Inman that the Redfin-Compass deal presents Zillow with an interesting option. The decision is to either withdraw or develop a competing product.
“None of this would have been possible without the Compass-Anywhere merger,” he said of the Redfin-Compass deal. “As we’ve seen in other industries where there’s scale and market power, market power over going public is clearly an important asset in this case and can reinvent the industry…It’s unclear what Zillow will do, but one would think something has to be done here rather than leaving things as they are.”
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