{"id":13639,"date":"2018-11-05T14:18:33","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T20:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/?p=13639"},"modified":"2018-11-05T14:23:47","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T20:23:47","slug":"zillow-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/corporate\/zillow-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zillow strategy – telling you to take your money and shove it"},"content":{"rendered":"

In college I would spend hours investigating what courses I would be taking the next semester. My university provided a flow chart of the kinds of classes I needed to enroll in, but it was completely up to me which one I chose. I used two main sites that helped my make my decision. One was a site that showed me every single variation of my potential schedule and the other was a crowd sourced rating site for the professor. Since then, several rating sites have come out all in different industries, and as you already know, real estate is no exception<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As a consumer, I have a very strange relationship with Zillow. I\u2019ve never bought a house, but I\u2019ve used Zillow to find multiple rental homes, to dream about homes I\u2019ll never afford because I like avocado toast and to look at the before photos of a home my friends bought. <\/p>\n

I also have a strange consumer opposition to them after their little Zestimates drama last year<\/a>, their recent foray into alleged photo poaching<\/a>, and their not so blatant attempt to run the table by buying a mortgage company<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That said, Zillow\u2019s new strategy has my interest piqued. <\/p>\n

With the purchase of Mortgage Lenders of America<\/a>, Zillow has secured their place at the adults table of the real estate world. They\u2019re now the search engine that will help you find a house, the company that will connect you to a Realtor and the lender that can help you buy it. Zillow is taking their one-stop shopping a step further and allowing you to rate your real estate agent (beyond their existing rating system) \u2014 just like I did with my professors. <\/p>\n

Customers will be asked for input on agents’ communication style, responsiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise (sound like HomeLight? Yeah, I know).<\/p>\n

In an effort to be customer satisfaction driven, Zillow\u2019s Premier Agent customers will be privy to reports based on data that Zillow will collect from other customers that will gauge agents\u2019 performance. <\/p>\n

Zillow believes their customers are all about customer service and I can\u2019t say they\u2019re wrong. I don\u2019t know of any industry where customers don\u2019t want quality assistance. The irony is not lost on me, though, that they\u2019re an online company trying to measure human interaction<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Zillow\u2019s President, Greg Schwartz, explained, \u201cwe promise you this: we\u2019re going to give you the greatest platform to make it happen. And we\u2019ll keep pushing to get it right so you can deliver exceptional experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solid promise, but how is it going to work? Will it be like the website I used to rate my professors where it was an option to do so or I could just lurk in the shadows and reap the benefits of the reviews? Or is it going to be like Uber \/ Favor \/ fill-in-the-blank-phone-app-service where I am required to submit a review before I\u2019m allowed to do literally anything else? They’ve long had agent ratings, but insiders suggest that an Uber-esque rating is really what’s in play here.<\/p>\n

Schwartz went on to talk about agents who aren\u2019t performing up to customer standards \u2014 again, are there hard and fast guidelines? Because I can guarantee you that as a customer, I will have different standards than Mariah Carrey. <\/p>\n

Schwartz said, \u201cFor agents who aren\u2019t performing up to customers standards \u2014 Zillow will no longer be interested in taking their money. The company wants to be able to tell every consumer who comes to the site that the agent they select will deliver a high-quality experience.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whoaaaaaa. Schwartz is really swingin\u2019 for the fences there. If you aren’t up to Zillow’s standards, they’ll tell you to take your money and shove it. Despite a shaky opinion of the mega-company, this speaks to me. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not entirely sure alienating large groups of a people you\u2019re trying to work with is the best strategy, but Zillow seems to have the appearance of trying<\/em> to do good things. We’ll see what shareholders think, how brokers will respond to a potential Uber-esque rating for their agents, and ultimately, how consumers opt to trust the data in a sea of subjective agent ratings alongside endless lawsuits against that shake confidence in the brand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(REAL ESTATE) Zillow is adding a new feature that is raising eyebrows, but could go a long way toward consumers’ trust in their new direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337692,"featured_media":13656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[1234,371,102],"class_list":["post-13639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate","tag-real-estate-news","tag-realtor-ratings","tag-zillow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/11\/zillow-lobby.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13659,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13639\/revisions\/13659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}