I can't imagine any reason why they would not list it on Zillow even if they had to do it manually. Whether one hates or loves Zillow and Trulia, it's all about exposing the house to the greatest market place. I hope you'll share her explanation. Not all MLS's auto list on Zillow and/or Trulia.

I do know rules for sharing listings via auto feeds has changed over the last few years. It maybe connected to that. I've not really kept up with those rule changes so I can't comment on them further.

The one reason I see to avoid zillow is if the zestimate is way under the list price. Now I know, as most people on this forum know, that zestimates are very often way off the true market value, but I am not convinced that the derived value doesn't impact many buyers. This would also be true on other websites that use an algorithm to arrive at published values. On the other hand, if your zestimate (or other algorithm derived published value) is high, I'd think you need to insist that it be listed on those websites.

Zillow and Trulia recently lost a contract with an MLS system that they would pull info from. You can google the details but I know that in the location I am looking in, most of the properties disappeared over a period of a week and there are only a few left. In my area where I have a house listed, there are only two properties showing on Zillow and Trulia. All the others disappered after the contract was lost.

I believe agents have to pay to list on zillow and trulia.

If you are concerned about it, ask the agent to write it into the contract. I would think the agent will agree.

I'm surprised others view them as important for listings. Learn something everyday.

It is late now, and I am tired. I can not get into the details of it all right now. It is a complicated, convoluted answer with a lot of differing opinions from agents. My current MLS just stopped sending listings to Zillow and Trulia about a month ago. (Zillow owns Trulia now). I could care less. In fact, I prefer it this way.

You said yourself that this agent and agency has good stats and that you liked her style, so what is the big deal? You have seen that this agent does not need Zillow to sell homes.

Zillow and Trulia are always so far off in their valuations, that they are a joke. Our MLS automatically sends to them, but I wouldn't ever pay for their service.

It's one thing for an entire MLS to withhold listings, as it will be apparent to any buyer. But for a single agency to do so, a buyer wouldn't necessarily know that listings are missing.

You said yourself that this agent and agency has good stats and that you
liked her style, so what is the big deal? You have seen that this agent
does not need Zillow to sell homes.

The "big deal" is that they're limiting visibility of my house to potential buyers. Whatever the issues agents have with zillow (and I'm interested in understanding them), lots of people use it to look for houses. Yeah, we all know the zestimate is worthless, but that's not what I use it for.

My buyers find homes from what I send them automatically from the MLS. I had a buyer just yesterday send me 5 listings from Zillow and asked me why I had not sent these to her. After researching them, they were either under contract, sold, or just incorrect data. A waste of her and my time.

Buyers will start their search on Zillow, but they end it with the MLS and their agent.

Just talked to the agent. She checked with the office, as she wasn't sure the latest policy, and they gave her these reasons:

1. Zestimates are way off.

2. Zillow somehow does CMAs, but how can they when they aren't local (might be related to #1; she wasn't real clear)

3. People can blog about your listing, and they don't think that's appropriate, because they may not have even been inside the place.

I haven't ever heard of #3, and just browsed around a bit, but could only find somewhere a Joe Blow could report errors in a listing, but not post publicly about it.

I asked her if she'd list my property on zillow if I signed with her, and she said she wouldn't go against company policy. So much for independent agents, eh?

My #2 choice was good in all the marketing stuff, and I liked her approach. She only has 2 years experience, and her comps were way off (picked ones in nicer neighborhoods that inflated her recommended price), but I've got a good handle on pricing, so I think I can live with that. She did list/sell as many houses as the other 2 last year.

I wouldn't use an agent that gives you inflated comps when trying to get your listing. What they are doing is unethical. It's a ploy to make you think they will get more money for your home, and once they get the listing, they let it sit without advertising it, and wait until the seller starts dropping their price. They may have sold as many houses as the other two, because they are getting a lot of listings initially due to their intentional misrepresentation of homes' values.

It's unethical. I don't deal with unethical people.

I agree with Linda. If the realtor is not using correct comps, that's a big Red Flag. I'd rather use the first realtor, despite the lack of Zillow/etc. If you are on MLS, then any person searching online will find your house.

I just bought a house I found on Zillow. Never showed up on my agent's MLS emails, because it was just over the border in a neighboring town than where we had originally started looking. I like searching listings by map for this reason.

I wasn't clear if the bad comps were on purpose or a newbie error. I guess I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. Should I give her a second chance, and ask her to re-examine her comps and propose something different?

Sushipup, I disagree with this: If you are on MLS, then any person searching online will find your house.

Someonesearching online via zillow would not find my house, because the MLS wouldn't feed it there.

Realtor.com has all MLS listings. That's where I tell my buyers to look, if they want to browse listings for sale. It's also updated every 15 min or so.

Weedyacres...I wouldn't give them a 2nd chance. The realtor is either sloppy, incompetent or unethical...none of which I would want selling my home.

"Sushipup, I disagree with this: If you are on MLS, then any person searching online will find your house.

"Someonesearching online via zillow would not find my house, because the MLS wouldn't feed it there."

I was thinking of looking on MLS/Realtor,com. Anyone who just searches on Zillow wouldn't be too bright if they ignored other sites.

I absolutely despise Zillow. But I am not sure that blanket policies to not list on Zillow are all that great. I would make sure the property will show favorably but more exposure is more exposure. On the other hand the Zestimate is so ridiculous that realtors have found that everything they list on Zillow is detrimental and so don't bother.

II understand realtors like realtor.com, but I find it difficult to navigate. I always use refin, I wouldn't use their agent but I much prefer their site and get instant updates on listings. I know redfin isn't everywhere.

When we sold my MIL's home the realtor said it would go on Zillow and Trulia, but NOT for the first week. He was top seller in that town, and I guess agents got priority with him. Back scratching thing? He sold that house prior to the first realtor preview for more than asking, so it never went on Zillow or Trulia. Anyone looking there would have never seen the home.

After the sale, we started looking for a home closer to the grand kids. I spent hours on Zillow and Trulia, only to find realtors list, but don't remove often and many of the listings were old. Finally we found a really good listing agent who had a home listed there. He showed it, we made an offer (full price cash), but someone offered more, so we lost it. He became our new buyers agent and put us into the MLS email system. Any home I saw that interested me, he would facilitate the showing. After 3 full price cash offers, we FINALLY got an acceptance. I think it's fun, as a buyer to look at Trulia and Zillow, but I now know their listings are sold, under contract and many realtors do not update their listings.

A relationship with a top listing agent in your area is a good thing if you are a buyer. Listing agents have knowledge of homes that will soon be listed and can arrange for you to see them prior to they even hit the market. I would never use a buyer's agent (with their stupid contracts) again.

I always recommend looking for a local MLS portal. A local realty here has an MLS portal that is much more up to date and accurate than the national MLS portals. The school listings are more accurate and the search engine has added features that make sense for our area but may not make sense everywhere.

i can attest to zestimates being whacked. my neighbors house zestimate is $8k higher than mine even after i updated my info re finished basement, pool, deck. they were built at exactly the same time but their house is smaller than ours with a 3/4 bath (not full) in the master. i honestly can't fathom what it is based on but it is there for the world to see and if i was selling now, it would be a worry.

also i feel like lookyloos use zillow (i know i do) whereas a qualified buyer working with an agent will not be using zillow but mls.

not sure if this is normal but my daughter's realtor friend signed her up for auto mls listing so she gets email updates ie zillow but it has way more info on the houses.

Zillow, Trulia and others are simply marketing tools. Realtors pay a fee to submit their listings, and sometimes they don't, and when they do, and the house is in contract, the realtor might just forget to mention that in the listing, and when it's sold, same thing. I can't count the times I called my realtor wanting to look at a home only to get the answer, "That was sold a year ago." I now stick strictly with the MLS, but kinda mute. We found the dream and are living in it. It's missing one thing. When we get old and one of us breaks a hip, we'll have to put in an elevator. We kinda know where, but it's something to fight about! :-)

I agree with Butternut. For site information, maps and navigation speed/page loads, Zillow was my go-to site, too. I would glance at the MLS houses the agent sent, and then look at the information about them in Zillow. The zestimates in my area are often more in tune with the local market than the delusional sellers. lol I took zestimates as not fact, but when a house is listed at $100,000 over zestimate, I had better see some reason for bump when I view the house in person. Realtor.com is a joke here; the information for my house (BR & Bath number, sq ft amount) are incorrect, even though they have the correct public information listed on the same page.

We are looking for a home in another state. We look at all the websites.

We don't consider the zestimates. I don't notice that they are there anymore.

We have land in another state and zillows zestimate is about 4-5 times what we paid for it.

I'm in the process of buying my first home, and true, when I first started looking I browsed Zillow and Trulia, but quickly realized they're NOT the best source of info on houses. My realtor linked me to a private client site which updated with every single MLS that fit my criteria, and out of the search sites only Realtor had accurate information on the houses.

Often listings on Zillow and Trulia are long gone and sold, and in the case of the house we're about to close on, it shows as off market on both sites. I even saw a listing to an amazing house at an amazing price and; as we usually did while house hunting, we sometimes drove by the house to see if it was worth it getting my Realtor to schedule a showing, or if the neighborhood was not something we even wanted to consider; when we drove by it the house did not even exist at that address.

I agree that Zillow has much better navigation for buyers than Realtor.com, but the inaccuracies will quickly make buyers crazy when they realize a lot of the homes they're looking at do not actually meet their criteria (esp when it comes to garages for some reason). See what NC RE Guy posted. Exactly.

For sellers, just think about how it will look when you list your house for say, $575K and the "Zestimate" is $503K? Guess what your first offer will be? (real example)

I believe if you sign up for a Zillow account you can post your home for sale manually. Zillow's instructions on how do this. I didn't try it myself so I'm not sure if you have to be a REA or if anyone can do it.

It says you must be the owner OR have authority to act for the owner.

I don't know why a realtor would not use Zillow but it has such a great advantage for someone looking to by land or a house. We were able to see the history of the land we purchased. The seller went down on the price for years which gave us a great insight when making an offer.

@chicagoans: yes, you can list FSBO on zillow (another reason some realtors don't like it?) I did that with both our house and the lot.

Personally I use both realtor.com and zillow. Realtor.com seems to get new listings a couple days earlier than zillow and has better search/filter features. But zillow has more info on sales history (used to be way off in my area but is now accurate), and I like that you can poke around the neighborhood on their map and see what else is nearby, listed or not.

That said, whatever its faults, zillow is still widely used, and any agent that foregoes listing there is limiting their marketing exposure.

In my area, Realtor.com has full history with past sales, dates of price reductions and other changes, tax info, etc. In my home quest last year, I quickly stopped using other sites which I found less adequate.

Same here, I get price history and sales history on Realtor.com, and also stopped looking at other sites after I noticed how much more accurate Realtor was. Only downside of Realtor is not listing FSBO, but for that I look at local listings.

Laura,

Gotta ask. Why would you not look also at Zillow for FSBO?

There are limitations and deficiencies with all of the discussed sites - to ignore any one of them because of a perceived shortcoming would seem foolish.

Kind of like posting a question here. Not all of the answers are without shortcomings... read all and sort out the aggregate data mine.

YMMV