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.