Rivals Zillow and Redfin Collaborate on 3D Listings Tech

U.S. real estate portals Zillow and Redfin have come to an agreement which will allow the automatic syndication of Zillow's 3D tours and interactive floor plans to Redfin's listings.

Redfin is the brokerage with a website that is one of the most popular portal destinations in the country while Zillow is the leading portal brand in the country. Zillow competes with Redfin for traffic and in several other categories including loan origination.

The common goal of allowing users to visualize a home via listings resources has brought the two together though. Agents will no longer have to generate a link and embed code to upload tours and floor plans made with Zillow's 3D Home technology to their listings on Redfin.

“Redfin wants to offer the most comprehensive and immersive home-shopping experience, which is why we’ve made it easy for agents to showcase 3D home tours of their listings on Redfin. Agents and sellers know that a 3D walkthrough can help their listing stand out and attract serious buyers,” a Redfin spokesperson told U.S. real estate publciation Inman.

"Zillow's goal is to give agents the best tools to allow home buyers the power to visualize themselves in a new place, regardless of what site they choose to browse with," said Josh Weisberg, VP of Zillow's Rich Media Experience team. "Customers have dramatically raised their expectations for a virtual home shopping experience over the past two years. This technology allows agents and photographers to meet those expectations with a seamless, immersive tour experience that is easily made and shared."

The two Seattle based companies have had a somewhat fractured relationship at times with Redfin calling Zillow out on the prominence of links to Redfin from Zillow's listings pages back in 2014. In recent times though the relationship has been more cooperative with a 2019 agreement allowing Redfin to send its brokerage listings directly to Zillow while there was an issue with syndication via the MLS.