Many moons and several bad hair styles ago, I wrote about the fun that could be had Playing Zillow. Today, Zillow went from fun to a downright rip-roaring time with the introduction of the Zillow Professional Directory.
From Zillow’s press release today:
The Zillow Professional Directory helps consumers interested in buying, selling or conducting home renovations, to find and connect with a local professional to fit their needs.
This is a great concept. What’s not to like? In order to encourage agents and other industry professionals to participate in the site, and to reward those who help feed the data base, they have created the Directory. It is a hierarchical listing of agents by region. Sure, you can search by name, but the default sort is by number of active listings on Zillow and by level of “contributions.” For instance, Steve and I are shown as having five listings on Zillow. This number appears embarrassingly moderate at first blush, at first blush that is until you realize that one is temporarily withdrawn and two others are pending. Oh, well. I am no longer hair-on-fire motivated to keep my postings current. Going from a five to a two would absolutely kill my rankings.
As for the contributions, a quite impressive 476 in our case, these don’t represent past listings, but instead every entry we have ever made for every listing we have ever posted. Each photo, for instance, counts as one contribution. These can add up quickly if you post a lot of photos, as we do. (If you are shopping for professional at this moment, I probably shouldn’t have told you this. Never mind. I am a BIG contributor! Let’s just leave it at that.)
So, I ran over to Zillow to bask in my glory as a Scripps Ranch Neighborhood Specialist, an “All-Star” as Zillow likes to call me. But I immediately encountered a little problem. It seems that a certain lazy, lazy agent never had gotten around to completing her profile. I suppose I was just too busy worrying about promoting my client’s homes. Realizing that this kind of thinking gets me nowhere in the eyes of the new directory, I edited my profile to promote my areas of expertise to all those in need of my professional services at this moment.
Now (drum roll), I will use the illustrative method in demonstrating that Zillow’s new brainchild is Ztupid.
A search for a Scripps Ranch, San Diego agent gave me this:
Number one is an agent team who works in Temecula which, if you are new to these parts, is in another county. Coming in at the number two spot we have a versatile agent team from, you guessed it, Temecula. Granted, Temecula is only a 45 minute drive (and a different MLS system), but they must be putting some miles on the ol’ Lexus! Here, from their profile, are the areas they serve:
Riverside County, Los Angeles County, and San Mateo! OK, you make it to San Mateo in a day, but you would definitely want to stop for lunch.
Keep in mind, this isn’t sour grapes. After all, they have more listings, more years in the business and far more contributions. I still managed to eke out fifth place. But this got me thinking. While it’s hard to break into the San Diego field, there are some areas ripe for the pickin’. And, apparently, we aren’t restricted to cities we have actually visited. So, with a simple series of key strokes, I was able to OWN Kodiak, Alaska. (Allow me to apologize in advance to Art. Your top spot will soon be restored, even though you don’t live anywhere near Kodiak.)
Then I remembered the time I replaced our kitchen faucet. Plumbing’s not so hard, so search for a plumber in all of San Diego, and I am there to help!
Silly as this sounds, lots of agents are doing it — because they can. So, to my Boise Blog friend Phil Hoover, who’s number five in Boise now? And to the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Jay Thompson, I may be on Gilbert’s Page Two, but I didn’t see you when I looked up. Besides, when you need a Gilbert plumber, who are you going to call?
(Note to my friends at Zillow: I will correct my profile soon, but so many others won’t, I suspect. Oh, and you might want to delete the user “I.M. Burr” who currently holds the number two agent spot for Kodiak, Alaska. He’s not real.)
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David G from Zillow.com
10.02.08 at 7:59 pm
Hi Kris,
Your critique is similar to Greg’s but oh so much more fun to read [Greg - sorry but you know it - although I really appreciate you not setting up shop in AK.] And both sets of criticisms are, I think, fairly valid from an agent’s perspective. Now that users have a way to search and browse agents, we will start to add more real-world performance metrics and customer feedback loops which will greatly help with the sort order in the directory. But it’s a start and now we finally have a portal to 150K RE Pro profiles. Two issues that aren’t as problematic as you’re thinking:
- taking down your listings won’t take you out of the list. You get credit for all your listing - both active and sold. And Greg definitely got me thinking about how we could use excessive DOM to further tweak the list.
- In some cases, service areas were automatically populated based on where the agent has had listings so cut your competitors some slack but do please flag anything weird.
Funny thing is that I’ve had the exact opposite response from lenders. All day thanks were pouring in from ZMM lenders and I think the major difference is we have a lender rating system and it’s allowing lenders to build valuable lead-generating profiles on Zillow.
More philosophically, my experience is that very very few agents abuse these systems that publicize their claims to hundreds of thousands of their competitors. I’ve seen how quickly an agent can catch a fine as a result of creative marketing. Frankly, moderating lenders from the wild-wild-west of the unregulated lending industry has taught me real appreciation for the REALTOR code of ethics, RE associations and all of the oversight around them [and now I hope Greg is not reading]
Back to the business at hand … I will be in Kodiak this weekend - please plan to show me all of the listings that have a good view of Russia.
Mark A.
10.02.08 at 9:48 pm
That’s funny, but wait, there’s more…
How ’bout those agents in my market (and probably yours as well) who can brag about having been in business for 99!! years? We’re talking waaay pre-Code of Ethics. Try beating that type of experience.
It’s all possible on Zillow. Just sort by “experience”.
Kris Berg
10.03.08 at 6:09 am
>More philosophically, my experience is that very very few agents abuse these systems that publicize their claims to hundreds of thousands of their competitors.
David - The top agents in nearly all areas I looked at were either REO reps I had never heard of carrying 150 active listings or were people promoting service areas of “Nevada, Montana, and Florida.” This might be seen as a good SEO opportunity or even a referral generator, I don’t know, but I know that the majority are not being true to their true service areas.
How ’bout this? Only list the agents in the state in which they are licensed and perhaps even in the county in which their principle office is located. That’s a start. As for market times, I think that is dangerous if for no other reason than a short sale may “sell” within a day but may not go inactive for 90 or 120 days or more awaiting lender approval.
As for me, I am going out of the plumbing business momentarily, and I think I am going to give up on Kodiak altogether. I wasn’t seeing a return on my investment, and the commute was killing me. I can refer you to Art, however. I hear he “hearts” referrals.
Jill Wente
10.03.08 at 7:29 am
Another directory, what a break through idea. I am surprised its FREE. I was expecting to have to pay for it.
I am not in the top 10 position, but I am going to focus on contributing to my own site versus someone else’s.
Jim
10.03.08 at 10:13 am
No, don’t get out of the plumbing business! I’ve got a washer that’s past its prime in the kitchen sink, I need someone to take it apart and fix it.
Kris Berg
10.03.08 at 12:01 pm
Jim - No can do. I quit going anywhere near “kitchens” a long time ago. They bring back bad memories of cooking and stuff. But, I can probably find you an excellent mortgage broker on Zillow who can help you with your faucet!
Phil Hoover
10.03.08 at 6:51 pm
I am seriously wondering why any successful agent would even WANT to bother with this nonsense.
Kris Berg
10.04.08 at 8:54 am
Phil - I think you are just jealous that I have moved into the Boise market.
No worries, my profile is officially updated. No more Boise, Gilbert or Kodiak for me. And no more plumbing. I was feeling stretched a little too thin.