Welcome to Week 20: Our Love / Hate Relationship with Zillow and the Rest

Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and a few others are the greatest sources of real estate information imaginable. There is no better way for a real estate professional to advertise real property. The technology they use has made locating and viewing property as easy as opening a smart phone app.

These websites and apps are used by millions and millions of home buyers and sellers every single month, and it costs us nothing to have our listings included. It is absolutely amazing when you think about it.

I love these websites and use them all the time.

On the other hand, the business model these websites employ has become a nightmare for many real estate agents. The companies take the information we give them and they ingeniously invite their visitors to click through for more information. These requests for information are then bounced back to the real estate community via email or text messages as sales leads.

Any sales agent can have access to these leads by paying a fee. The fee is generally in the form of a subscription to an ‘enhanced listing tool’ or an opportunity to have their contact info more prominently displayed on the screen. An agent can even purchase semi-exclusive rights to leads in specific zip codes.

Each of the listing portals make extensive training available to their paying Realtor clients. The training is designed to teach an agent how to turn any given lead into a sale. The key tenant of the training is for the agent to make themselves available 24 hours a day 7 days a week just in case they get a lead. Agents are then taught to respond immediately or run the risk of the customer moving on to the next agent for the answers they seek.

In this scenario, the customer sees every agent as the same because let’s face it, they don’t care who responds they just want a response. In my opinion these inquiries don’t qualify as a sales lead at all. The system perpetuates the myth that all agents are the same and devalues the services the very best professionals provide.

This is a lousy way to make a living. Agents can do better and we can help. Stay tuned for next week to learn about the ROOST Real Estate Co. Lead Generation Machine.

– Shayna

For a free copy of the full book, A Real Estate Agents Guide to the Good Life, email FreeBook@ROOSTRealEstateCo.com and we will send you one. Or download a free e-book version here: www.CareerWithROOST.com