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I am Curious Zillow: Will You Honor Home Seller Requests as Per NAR DOJ Settlement?

Published by Joseph Ferrara (2) June 20th, 2008 in zillow. Comments

The NAR DOJ settlement put marketing power firmly in the hands of home sellers when it comes to displaying a home for sale on the internet.

Under the settlement, Sellers have the right to the following restrictions when their homes are marketed online:

  1. withhold listings and property addresses from display on the internet and
  2. prevent comments, reviews and AVM valuations from attaching to their listings on the internet

See: Modified VOW Policy (Exhibit A) of the (Proposed) Final Judgment

The Settlement only applies to VOWs. When I asked whether Zillow, which is NOT a VOW, would honor a seller request in keeping with the spirit of the settlement, I did not get an answer beyond “…it’s not an issue for Zillow; we’re not a VOW.”

Today, I did a zip code search on Zillow (awful- so many wrong zips) and noticed a lot of homes coming up : Address Undisclosed

And guess what, none had a zestimate displayed:

So, being the curious fellow that I am, I have a lot of questions for Zillow:

1. Do listing agents & home sellers have the ability to manually withhold addresses from listings on Zillow or is it simply because they came through the broker feed without an address?

Hmm…..

2. If the broker feed does not include an address, does this cause the zestimate to be disabled — since there is no address, Zillow can’t access the public record? (makes sense)

Hmm…

Did I just stumble across a work-around to disable a zestimate?

While on the subject, I ask this question, in hope of an answer (knowing Zillow’s advocacy of transparency):

3. If a home seller has requested their broker to withhold an AVM or disable Q&A or withhold an address attached to their online listing (as per NAR/DOJ settlement), and Zillow receives written notice of that fact from the listing broker, will Zillow honor any of these requests, even though they are not part of the NAR-DOJ settlement? (a simple yes or no will suffice)

Just curious.

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  • *breaks out popcorn*

    I am enjoying this discourse. I really love the power of the internet when it comes to creating accountability. The issue being raised here is a very pertinent and important one, and merely paying lip-service is nonsense.
  • Brokers who send feeds with addresses appear not to get a separate page but are incorporated into the zestimated Zillow page. IS this correct?

    If so, Zillow, by giving an extra page to those who want addresses undisclosed (& w/o zestimate), can be argued to be honoring the spirit of the DOJ NAR settlement, despite not being bound to it. Otherwise, they would tie the 2 pages together and the buyer could get to see the zestimate & address-- the kind of transparency Zillow normally advocates.

    This has ramifications.
  • Hi David,

    Let's begin. BTW, did you like the image? I really like how it came out-- curious yellow, curious zillow-- get it?. But I digress.

    You said: "These listing pages are not found by many buyers relative to those that have addresses because most buyers use our mapped search results to browse for listings."

    Do you have data to support your statement that most buyers use your mapped search? I thought most use the cute little Googlish search boxes. Isn't that why they're on the home page?

    I did a search using the non-optional box labeled: "Neighborhood, city, state OR zip." I chose zip. If you notice, the address box is labeled "OPTIONAL". My logic tells me since the second box is mandatory, it is filled in by EVERY user and thus MORE so than the optional address box. Anyway....

    ... the results shown were outside my zip (that's another story-- Zillow really oughta get a better search engine). I clicked "See Homes in a List" and surprise--

    The results I got first were NOT homes with zestimates but the listings I showed in the post-- those w/ undisclosed addresses (so your default setting may need some fixin') and they DO have home details:

    http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=214...
    (page 1 result. address undisclosed with home details but no zestimate)

    And guess what, they were displayed AHEAD of the homes with addresses: homes w/o addresses, pg 1-2, homes with addresses following on p 3 (hey I don't make this stuff up)

    http://tinyurl.com/4xxgyn

    Try it yourself: type 10314, then click go, then click "see homes in a list", you will get 6 pages. page 1-2 are undisclosed addresses ahead of those w/ addresses on p3. Did you try it or should I send you an email :)

    So, the end result is the broker who sends a feed w/o an address will cause the homes to display FIRST, at least in a zip search (I have to try others) and w/o a zestimate (I call that a work-around of the zestimate)

    Post title is not misleading-- it's a first step ;)

    If you read the post, you'd see I mention early on that Zillow is NOT (I used all caps) a VOW and later that Zillow is not part of the settlement. You're not still confused are you?

    Now, how 'bout we get to the crux of the biscuit:

    If a seller requests the Listing agent to disable AVM, comments and address as he or she can per NAR-DOJ, would Zillow honor that request on zillow.com, DESPITE not being bound to the settlement? It's a simple question. My guess is No -- which implies that Zillow knows what is best for a seller.

    Even though you didn't answer my 3 questions (what happened to transparency, David?), I will answer yours:

    1) yes. But you can't trust email because of spam filters. Plus you have to wait for an answer. I chose to be more efficient and search the site myself--- besides, I was only following your advice-- you always tell me "Joe, I suggest you visit zillow.com and blah, blah blah." Going there directly just saves the blah, blah, blah of an email.

    2) re-read the post and this comment. Research to me is going to zillow.com and doing searches, NOT calling you and asking you what happens if I do a search. Make sense?

    As always, it is a pleasure dancing with you. BTW, allow me to treat you to drinks at Inman for keeping you busy late on Friday afternoons and weekends :) But where else can you be so entertained than here?
  • PS ...

    Joe, as you know and as per your posts on this topic, the NAR / DOJ settlement has no baring on Zillow. As such, I find the title of this post extremely misleading. "as Per NAR DOJ Settlement" suggests that Zillow is somehow subject to that agreement which is not true.

    Would you please update your posts title to clarify this important issue?
  • Joe -

    The NAR / DOJ settlement is unrelated to Zillow. No Zestimates were "disabled" in order to publish these listings.

    The listings you're referring to do in fact have normal home detail pages on Zillow.com and those detail pages include Zestimate values just like they do for the rest of the homes on the site. Let me repeat that; these homes have Zestimate values on Zillow.

    Here's what's happening here; in some parts of the country it's common to advertise listings without publishing their addresses. I'm yet to hear a really good reason for it and it is certainly suboptimal marketing but it's the way that some brokerages choose to syndicate listings (to all sites, not just Zillow) and so we came up with this solution to be able to display these listings to buyers on Zillow.

    When we get a listing in a feed, for which it is specified that the address may not be displayed, we create a second detail page for the home with only the listing information. The home does still have its normal home detail page on Zillow, there's just no listing details on it.

    I want to be clear that this is not the best way to advertise a listing on Zillow. Far from it. These listing pages are not found by many buyers relative to those that have addresses because most buyers use our mapped search results to browse for listings. And if a buyer who has seen a yard sign outside the home searches for the address on Zillow they will find the home's detail page and its Zestimate but they won't find anything about the listing on the home's detail page.

    This feature is currently an option for brokers that feed their listings to Zillow.

    Joe - Questions for you ...

    1) Have you heard of "e-mail"? It's this great little invention that enables bloggers to do research. For that matter ...

    2) Have you heard of "research"? With a quick "e-mail" sent to me, you could have had the answer to these questions.
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