Earlier this year, Century 21 Canada announced an exciting partnership with Zillow, the largest online real estate network in the U.S. We’re thrilled to lead the way as Zillow’s first Canadian partner.
However, often with innovation and change comes uncertainty, and we know many of you have questions around what Zillow coming to town means for us, our clients and the industry. So, I want to tell you why we are partnering with Zillow and clarify a few major misconceptions and inaccuracies I’ve heard bubbling within the industry.
First and foremost, Century 21 Canada’s brokers and agents serve home sellers and home buyers and when new innovations that can improve the home selling and buying experience come along, C21 embraces those innovations. Zillow is by far the most recognized real estate portal in the U.S. and has a great many buyers searching for real estate from other parts of the world (over 100 million international visits last year) as well. By partnering with Zillow, C21 agents will expose their listings to a much wider audience, at no cost.
Zillow Group’s brands receive an average of 186 million unique users every month. Zillow has the tools, resources, brand recognition and massive traffic that will bring unprecedented global exposure for C21 listings and our agents. This is a huge advantage for us. We are very excited about this partnership and I know our clients and home sellers will be too.
What’s more, despite the false statements I’ve heard from some of my peers in the industry who are currently not partnering with Zillow, agents do NOT “buy” back leads on their own listings. C21 listing agents – and all listing agents on Zillow for that matter – will be prominently displayed on their listing. Brokerage information as well as specific information about the listing agent is always featured on the listings. It also does NOT cost money to put a for-sale listing on Zillow.
So why not just use Realtor.ca? Well, Realtor.ca is a great portal that we all own and CREA operates on our behalf. But it has never been a stellar consumer experience and is certainly not anywhere near as well-known outside of Canada as Zillow. And if all the listings from all 127,000 Realtors in Canada are on it – what differentiation is it providing to you when you’re competing for your next listing?
C21 has always led the way when it comes to technology innovation. Today, for example; we don’t simply provide our agents a list of vendors to choose from for full websites or CRM or marketing tools. We believe to provide the most consistent and professional consumer experience, every C21 broker and agent should have all the tools, tech and training they need to be successful – right from the day they start until the day they retire.
This fall C21 is launching REW (Real Estate Webmasters) websites and blogs with fully integrated CRM and marketing centre (with hundreds of instantly customizable print, email and social media marketing pieces) for every C21 broker and agent across Canada. It’s all included at no extra charge.
Instead of relying on simple DDF (data distribution facility) for our broker and agent sites, C21 Canada has invested in direct data feeds from every MLS in the country to ensure the most timely and accurate listing data and full IDX (internet data exchange) feeds where possible that provide far superior data sets.
So, what’s the downside of partnering with Zillow and investing in such a vast array of other tech and training differentiators for C21 brokers and agents? Nothing. Unless of course, you’re not a C21 broker or agent.
Brian Rushton is executive vice president of Century 21 Canada.
