There’s Redfin and Compass. Now, there’s Zillow and Keller Williams, too.
The two real estate behemoths announced a new partnership on Tuesday that enables Keller Williams affiliates to market their coming-soon listings on KW.com, Zillow and Trulia. The partnership is made possible via Zillow Preview, a new program the portal crafted to enable agents and their sellers to “pre-market” listings while complying with local multiple listing service (MLS) rules, which dictate how long a listing can remain in coming-soon status before going active.
Gary Keller
In addition to Keller Williams, the inaugural cohort of companies that will have access to Zillow Preview includes REMAX, HomeServices of America, United Real Estate and Side.
Agents can access Zillow Preview through their local broker, and they’re responsible for understanding and complying with their local MLS rules for any pre‑marketing activity, the companies’ announcement explained.
In a statement, KW Executive Chairman and co-founder Gary Keller said, “We believe an open market serves consumers the best.”
“Sellers should have the opportunity to reach the broadest pool of potential buyers if they choose to do so, because broad exposure generally benefits the homeowner,” Keller continued. “Sellers should always retain the right to set the parameters around how their home is marketed. Information, marketing plan, timing, showing rules, and offer management — those decisions belong to the homeowner. Our job as professionals is to fully disclose and explain the options and let the seller decide.”
Zillow Preview listings will receive “priority placement” in homebuyers’ search results and saved-home alerts, and will feature broker branding. Listing agents will also get access to real-time listing insights, including views, saves, shares, and tour requests, and have the opportunity to be the first point of contact for homebuyers who request additional information.
There’s also a potential monetary benefit, the announcement explained. If a qualified Zillow Preview lead purchases a home with one of Zillow’s partner agents, the listing agent may receive a share of Zillow’s revenue associated with that transaction.
Jeremy Wacksman
“KW continues to lead with a commitment to both their affiliated agents and the consumers they serve,” Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman said of the partnership. “Through Zillow Preview, they’re giving their affiliated agents the ability to bring listings to market sooner, build early momentum, and reach a broad audience — without limiting access along the way.”
In a phone conversation with Inman, Zillow Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson said that Zillow Preview listings exist “prior to going into the MLS.”
“So either the broker could send us a feed of these listings, or agents can direct-enter them for display on Zillow,” Samuelson added.
Preview listings won’t require all input fields that are included in a listing on the MLS. Rather, they’ll include the basics that would be expected for a listing to be displayed on a consumer-facing real estate search platform.
Samuelson also noted the offering’s compliance with MLS rules.
“MLSs around the country have slightly different rules, but they all have a rule, or almost all have a rule, that says something like you need to put the listing into the multiple listing service within … the most common rule would be … one business day of public marketing,” Samuelson said.
Some MLSs have rules in place that allow for listings to reside in a Coming Soon status for several weeks before being widely distributed.
“Whatever that local rule is, that’s the amount of time that the agent would put the listing in Preview to gauge demand, to start generating excitement,” Samuelson said. “The whole point of this particular program is to make sure that those — to the extent the MLS permits it and agents choose to take, and sellers choose to take advantage of it — then those listings are available to everybody.”
Buyers won’t be able to request tours for homes that are within the Preview status until after the date that the listing is set to become active, Samuelson said.
Whether the listing accumulates days on market may depend on the local market.
Zillow Preview’s debut comes roughly two weeks after Compass International Holdings and Redfin announced a similar partnership that enables Compass-affiliated agents to display coming-soon listings on Redfin.
There are some notable differences between the two partnerships, though.
Redfin hasn’t revealed plans to extend the partnership beyond Compass brands while their three-year agreement is in place, and the portal also agreed to remove days on market, price histories, and home valuation estimates from Compass’ coming-soon listings.
The Redfin-Compass deal also has a mortgage component, with Redfin parent company Rocket now serving as Compass International Holdings’ digital mortgage partner. Compass and Redfin have also not focused on MLS rules, and Compass CEO Robert Reffkin continues to advocate for a radically different listing system built on a national MLS.
The entrance of Zillow — which is engaged in a lawsuit with Compass over the brokerage’s three-phase marketing strategy — into the coming-soon listings game will likely add fuel to a deepening industry debate about listing data, access and distribution.
Industry strategist and Alloy Advisors co-founder Russ Cofano recently told Inman that the Redfin-Compass deal presented Zillow with an interesting choice — stay out or create a competing product.
“None of this would have been possible without the Compass-Anywhere merger,” he said of the Redfin-Compass deal. “As we see in other industries, where there is scale and market power, in this case, market power over listings, it’s clearly the key asset and can reform an industry … It’s uncertain what Zillow is going to do, but one would think they have to do something here and not just let this play out.”
