Zillow Enhances its Zillow Premier Agent Service and StreetEasy Bumps Up its Listing Fees

Continuing its accelerated strategy plans, Zillow has improved its Zillow Premier Agent experience for partnered agents to help them connect with potential buyers in a quicker and more efficient way. 

The enhanced Zillow Premier Partner feature will, according to Zillow, connect agents with buyers 45% faster than telephone connections. The updates also bring with it more customer data and insights to help agents build their brands at the same time they generate customer leads. 

Racquel Russell, Zillow Vice President of Partner Success, explained: 

"Ultimately we want to help buyers get into their dream home, and giving agents the tools to provide exceptional service to our shared customers is a key factor in making that happen."

This optimized version of Zillow Premier Agent offers a number of new services that help accelerate customer generation for agents, including:

• Request details from a prospective buyer are sent directly to Zillow Premier Agent partners
• Connect directly with a customer within the Zillow Premier Agent app
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities in place of traditional phone calls
• Push notifications with the option of VoIP or phone call 

The shopping aspect of home hunting has been streamlined, as well. Customers can save more than one listing and agents can see all favorite listings in one place in order to get a better idea of what the customer is looking for in a home. 

Zillow has also claimed that being able to do all of this via one platform offers agents a 7% higher appointment rate compared to traditional phone calls, saving agents time and money.

On the business side, Zillow-owned NYC rental platform, StreetEasy, is switching things up in a less exciting way for listers. 

In March of last year, due to the pandemic and the uncertainty it wrought on the real estate industry, StreetEasy offered listing discounts as an incentive to keep traffic and platform usage up while lockdowns swept the country. 

The real estate industry has bounced back and with it, StreetEasy has announced a 50% increase in listing fees. Daily listings fees for rentals have gone from $3 to $4.50, which is still not back to pre-pandemic rates. Before March, it cost listers $6 a day to utilize StreetEasy’s services. 

A spokesperson for StreetEasy explained:

“NYC is coming back to life and the real estate market is following, with units spending less time on market and record engagement from renters on StreetEasy. While the market is normalizing, we don’t yet know what constitutes the new normal so we’ve decided to adjust the NYC Rental Network concession to 25% off the standard rate.”

The fees have brought StreetEasy much controversy since they were first put in place in 2017. The fees have changed a number of times since then but the company is sticking to its guns, stating that the sector is stabilizing and the company is keeping up with that, even with the criticism.