Zillow launches Virtual Sold Sign program
By: Jorrit Van der Meulen VP, Partner Relations | February 21, 2008
I was flying to Orlando for a set of meetings and, while reading RIS, I saw an ad for sold properties and a quote from Alex Perriello that talked about spending 20% of one’s marketing budget on sold properties.
I’m here to tell you that Zillow can do this unlike any other Web site out there - for FREE!
This past November we launched the Zillow Listings Feed program, and with it announced an entirely new concept for our feed providers to start signing up for: the Virtual Sold Sign program (VSS). Well, as of last night, we have finished building this new functionality and it is now live on Zillow.com!
Because Zillow has a database of almost all of the homes in the country, we have the unique opportunity to provide this feature. Traditional listings sites just take a listing down once the transaction is complete, but we have over 4 million visitors coming to Zillow and viewing millions of recently sold homes each month. In fact, over 35 million homes have been viewed on Zillow since we launched. In some cities (Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, among others), over 90% of ALL homes in those cities have been viewed on Zillow. Your sold homes are already getting viewed a lot on Zillow, with (until now) nothing to distinguish them as your sold homes.
The VSS program allows agents and brokers to continue marketing themselves on their sold properties for free, long after the home has actually sold. Past transactions can even be submitted, to get attribution for listings that so long before the Zillow Listings Feed program was even started. It’s like leaving the “sold” sign up in the yard of each and every home you’ve ever sold.
Aside from the obvious benefit to agents and brokerages, the VSS program is beneficial to prospective sellers, and even buyers to find out who the top agents and brokerages are in their neighborhood, or the neighborhood where they want to move.
Interested in participating in the Zillow Listings Feed and Virtual Sold Sign programs for free? Just go to our listings feed page to sign up! Need more info? Feel free to email me or post a question here and I’ll be back to answer it.
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- Categories: Real Estate, Real Estate Industry, Zillow
Comments
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Zillow’s Virtual Sold Signs go live: Are yours up yet? | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technology blog | Realtors and real estate, mortgages, lending, investments on February 21, 2008 8:49 pm
[...] you’re a working Realtor, Zillow.com’s Virtual Sold Sign technology is another weapon you can deploy in your guerrilla marketing [...]
Kendyl Young on February 21, 2008 9:12 pm
So, what happens to those of us that are part of a large national company? I certainly can not sign up my entire company for this feed, and anyway, I think Coldwell Banker is already feeding to you. How do I get VSS on my listings as a mere agent, and not a broker?
David Gibbons on February 22, 2008 12:17 am
Kendyl -
If your broker / MLS / franchise / software vendor is already feeding us your listings, just speak to them about also sending us the sold data. VSS currently applies to listings received via data feed but we also plan to enable VSS on manual listings at some point.
Terry Sanford on February 22, 2008 8:29 am
Any chance you are going to let us Buyer Agents in on the party?
Joe Dallorso on February 22, 2008 9:48 am
I’m disapointed as an agent that I can’t just claim a sold listing like the new home owner can.
James Orr on February 22, 2008 10:30 am
As a stats junkie (and how many people that use Zillow aren’t), I wonder if the great folks at Zillow have thought about tracking the effectiveness of these features with some type of click through tracking that the agents can see.
I love that we can see how many times a house has been viewed. From the account, it might be nice to be able to see how many times certain things are clicked on… it could be the start of additional revenue streams for Zillow by adding premiums.
This has started me thinking about some other things to request like being able to “farm a neighborhood” with your ad.
Hmmm… some things to consider.
Thanks…
James
David G from Zillow.com on February 22, 2008 5:26 pm
Terry - yes, we’re going to do that!
Joe - it’s in the works. (Can you write software?)
James - it just so happens that our broker partners are stats junkies too. That’s a popular request and so we’re busy building them a reporting interface. As for farming a neighborhood; EZ Ads allow you to target your advertising to folks searching for homes in specifc Zip codes. Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/25d6k4
Dustin on February 23, 2008 1:47 am
I think you’re missing out on a bunch of listings. I am pretty sure our company does not do automatic feeds to zillow. My guess is they dont want to. But as a listing agent who usually carries a high volume of listings i would like to be able to use this feature. I currently manually upload my own listings but feel you need to get this feature to work for agents like myself who support your site too.
I read this could also be done or will be possible to do this on past listings that were sold before zillow started tracking them. I would love to put my virutal sold signs on my past sales that have not resold since i sold them last.
Dustin
New Ideas About Travel And Real Estate » Blog Archive » Zillow feature allows agents to revisit past sales on February 24, 2008 4:34 am
[...] today announced the launch of a new feature at its Web site that allows agents and brokers to market themselves at [...]
Carnival of Real Estate 79th Edition | Overseas Property Investment Blog | Nubricks on February 25, 2008 4:20 am
[...] Zillow launches Virtual Sold Sign program [...]
Thomas Johnson on February 26, 2008 9:59 pm
More Zestifarming- I love it!
David- Is Realogy sending sold data at their level? How do we get sold data to you otherwise?
Gerry on February 28, 2008 5:22 pm
Will the listings feed service work for feeds from overseas ?
Phil Sexton on March 13, 2008 9:24 am
I work out of the corporate office of a Phoenix brokerage. I would like to preach this program at the next round of office meetings, so I found a volunteer that allowed me to sign her up (Barb Kowatz). Of course all I seemed to do was set her up with a profile, and create a few questions.
I accepted the terms of use for the company. Is John Hall & Associates now signed up for you to receive all listings? Will every agent be asked to check this box - or is the first agent the only one asked?
Now that I checked that box, does the brokerage get a login?
How do I know if the feed was set-up properly? Barb’s listings aren’t showing up, and I don’t see where I can edit the feed.
Thanks for the help!
Welcome, MLS PIN! | Zillow® Blog on March 19, 2008 9:04 am
[...] nearly 5 million visitors each month. In addition, MLS PIN is also participating in Zillow’s Virtual Sold Sign program, which allows agents and brokers to continue to market their services on Zillow, long after [...]