Let me ask you, America’s real estate professionals, one question. Do you want Zillow to be the defining marketplace for homes in this country?
That’s the real question buried inside the response Zillow economist Mischa Fisher wrote to my recent Inman op-ed. Understand what he’s quietly asking you to accept.
Throughout his article, Fisher effectively labels any home not posted on Zillow a “private listing.” A home marketed through social media, email, a brokerage’s own website, a coming-soon campaign, or a dozen other proven channels becomes, in Zillow’s view, “private.” Hidden. Kept from the public.
In a nutshell, his position is this: If your listing is not on Zillow, it’s hidden. It’s private. That is categorically false. And it is the foundation his entire argument rests on.
That is a bold presumption none of us voted for: that Zillow is the defining public marketplace and that a home counts as “public” only if it lands there within 24 hours of being marketed anywhere else, under a Zillow policy that can ban a listing from the site for good.
Who decided that? Not homesellers. Not homebuyers. They don’t hire Zillow. They hire us. They want the judgment of a real estate professional, not a portal. Zillow is a vendor. A tool. It’s not the government, and it’s not our trade association.
The moment we accept that off-Zillow means hidden, we have handed a third-party vendor the power to dictate how every home in America gets marketed and how every homebuyer in America gets monetized.
The word ‘private’
I have said this for years in my training, my writing and from every stage I’ve stood on. The word “private” is being weaponized. It is being used as a synonym for “hidden from buyers,” and that is simply not what marketing a home away from the portals means.
So here is my advice to every brokerage and agent reading this. Strike the word “private” from your marketing vocabulary.
I understand how it crept in. It sounds exclusive. Buyers want to feel like insiders, first through the door, seeing something the crowd can’t. That instinct is real, and it sells. But that same word is now being turned against us, used by Zillow and those aligned with it to paint a professional marketing choice as something sneaky.
This didn’t happen overnight. The flexibility agents once had in what we could show in our photos and write in our descriptions has been stripped away to fit others’ business models, Zillow’s included. They use our listings, for free, for their own profit.
And “rules” have been carefully designed to enhance that profit. For example, Zillow won’t allow the listing agent’s name, number or brokerage to appear in photos or descriptive copy, so buyers are more likely to assume its “contact agent” button reaches the agent who knows the home.
Most don’t realize they’re being routed to whoever paid for the lead, someone who may have never set foot in the property.
And Fisher, on behalf of Zillow, lectures us about transparency.
The least transparent model in the industry
One of Fisher’s core arguments is transparency. He calls listings kept off the major portals, notably Zillow, “an information asymmetry machine,” a setup that supposedly favors the more-informed side, the seller, at the buyer’s expense.
I don’t disagree that transparency matters. What I can’t square is how Zillow gets to crown itself the champion of it.
Look at what Zillow shows buyers:
- Days on market
- Every price cut
- Offer guides that coach buyers to bid below asking and estimate the odds a seller will accept
Every one of those tools arms the buyer against the seller.
Now look at what the seller gets in return. Nothing.
- How long has this buyer been shopping?
- How many offers have they already made?
- How many sellers turned them down for coming in too low?
Zillow shows sellers none of it.
That is not transparency. That is a one-way mirror. And the company holding it up is the same one diverting buyers to lead-paying agents instead of the professionals who know the home. If anyone has built an information asymmetry machine, it is Zillow.
Who’s really adding the cost
Fisher also reaches for the affordability crisis, suggesting we make housing “feel more scarce” while families struggle to buy.
The affordability crisis is real. It deserves its own article. But it is not the fault of America’s homesellers, and a seller’s right to pursue the best possible price does not disappear because buyers face high interest rates, too few new homes and years of rapid price appreciation on the homes that do exist.
Is Zillow’s real message that sellers should price lower and market in ways that hand buyers the advantage? It already does plenty of that for them.
So, ask yourself who is really adding cost here. Zillow inserts itself between buyer and seller, then routes that buyer to an agent who paid Zillow for the introduction, an agent who typically charges that buyer thousands in commission to see and purchase the home.
Zillow earns hundreds of millions, by some measures billions, on those referral arrangements. That money comes straight out of the cost of buying a home.
A company that profits by planting a paid toll booth between buyers and sellers is in no position to lecture our industry about affordability.
What to remember
Fisher closes by telling readers to remember “Who’s driving, and who’s getting run over.” I’d ask America’s real estate professionals to take his advice and really think about that. Because Zillow wants to be the one driving, with the power to decide who gets run over.
It’s one thing to say you stand for transparency, for affordability, for the consumer. It’s another thing to be it.
Zillow says it. Zillow isn’t it.
So I’ll leave you with the only question that matters: Who do you want at the wheel?
Greg Hague is an attorney, 50-year real estate veteran, and the founder of 72SOLD (an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company). Ranked the No. 1 agent in his state and No. 19 nationally by Realtor Magazine, he was recently appointed Director of Home Sales Strategy for Compass International Holdings, helping 100,000+ Century 21 agents grow their market share and better serve America’s homesellers.
