Real Estate News with Terri Taydus, AHWD, CNA, CRS, GRI

Zillow / Trulia recently rolled out a new feature that I am less than enthusiastic about.  It’s called “My Agent”.  Here’s how it works:

• You find a home that you like on Zillow / Trulia and you reach out to one of the real estate agents along the right hand side of your screen for more information.
• The agent contacts to you either via email, phone, text, or all three, and you start a dialogue. If you hit it off, the agent can look at your contact info in Zillow / Trulia and send you an invitation to be your agent.
• You will receive an email invite and you can choose to either accept or decline.
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  • I don’t really have an issue with this, as the potential home buyer or seller gets to make the decision.

     

    Here is where things can (in my opinion) go south

     

• You find a home that you like on Zillow / Trulia and you reach out to one of the real estate agents along the right side of your screen for more information.
• The agent pays to subscribe to Zillow / Trulia’s concierge service (I personally do not care for this service and opt out, as I want to personally connect with potential clients vs. having them receive a call from Zillow).
  • The concierge service calls you in an effort to connect you to the actual agent and “scrub” your lead via telephone and to assess how “real” of a home buyer or seller you are.
  • IF the concierge service is successful and they connect you with the agent you reached out to, then Zillow / Trulia will automatically make that agent “your agent” for the next 30 days as part of this new program.

     

    What IS Zillow’s “My Agent” Program?

     

    If you accept an invitation from an agent that you have started a dialogue with for them to be your agent, the next time you search on Zillow / Trulia, only this agent and the listing agent will appear along the right side of your screen. This eliminates confusion and keeps you from accidently getting sent to one of the competing agents along the right hand side and having to repeat your needs to someone new.

     

    Not so bad, right?  So long as you have started a dialogue with an agent that you now like and you get to choose.

     

    However, if the agent you clicked on uses Zillow’s concierge service and they connect you via telephone to the agent that you clicked on, Zillow will automatically set that agent up as “your agent” and you will now not see other agents along the right hand side of your screen, even if you decided that you did not care for the agent you were connected with – Zillow has now taken the choice away from you!

      

    What can you do about it?

     

    If you try to reach out to an agent along the right hand side of the screen when shopping for a home on either Zillow or Trulia and your call is directed to the concierge service, you can do the following:

• Hang up and reach out to a different agent along the right side of your screen, and hopefully get one that is interested in providing a more personal service.
• Allow the call to go through to the concierge service but ask that they NOT automatically make the agent they are connecting you to “your agent”

I hope this information is helpful to you.  I honestly do not think that the “My Agent” program is a bad thing, I just think that the choice should be yours as to if you want to exclusively see only one agent (plus the listing agent) along the right side of your screen when you are searching for homes in either Zillow or Trulia.

Questions?  Please feel free to contact me.  I am always here to help :)