Zillow, Right at Home Realty partner for Canadian launch
It’s still unclear whether U.S. real estate ad website will have sold prices for houses
Online U.S. real estate giant Zillow has struck a listings deal with a second Canadian company, but has not yet announced a launch date for posting those properties on Zillow.com.
The company, which has indicated before that it would be launching Canadi- an listings later this year, would only say that they “will be featured on Zillow.com soon.”
Right at Home Realty, a Toronto-based brokerage with about 1,800 listings, will provide a direct feed of its listings when Zillow launches in Canada, the company announced Thursday.
The two have been talking since about June, said Right at Home chair and CEO Ron Peddicord. That is when Century 21 Canada announced it had struck a similar agreement with Zillow to provide its 26,300 national listings to the site.
“We’re partnering with them for a Canadian launch. This isn’t about putting Canadian listings in the U.S.,” he said.
It is unclear whether the Canadian list- ings will include the sold prices that the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) is in the process of releasing to its members, because the rules and the format of the new Toronto listings, including sold and other sales history data, are still being worked out, he said.
Zillow’s announcement on Thursday said that the Canadian listings on its site will include a description of the property, photos and contact information for the listing agent, as well as a link to the brokerage.
Right at Home’s 4,100 realtors will benefit from the exposure on Zillow.com, which claims to receive more than 100 million visits from non-U.S. users each year, chiefly from Canada, Britain, Germany, Mexico and China.
“Zillow is proud to partner with Right at Home Realty and offer this widely respected Canadian brand free advertising for their listings on one of the most visited real estate sites in the world,” said Errol Samuelson, Zillow group chief industry development officer in a press release.
Zillow is not a real estate sales company. It sells ads and when a consumer clicks on a property, a real estate agent’s advertisement will appear on that page.
The U.S. is the top foreign travel destination for Canadians. It will take time for Zillow to build a presence here, but the brand is already familiar to many Canadian real estate browsers, Peddicord said.
“Zillow has such a penetration in the U.S. that any Canadian that has ever looked for real estate in the U.S. has used Zillow,” he said.
“We view it as a digital-aged version of what used to be the Saturday real estate section,” Peddicord said.
“Agents have struggled outside of the Multiple Listings Service with what marketing tools do I have to get further exposure to my listings.”
The shrinkage of print advertising has been filled in part, he said, by online marketplaces such as Kijiji.
“That gap in the U.S. has been filled by Zillow,” he said. A Canada-wide expansion for Zillow would be significant, Peddicord said.
“Size-wise, it’s adding a market that is the equivalent to the size in population of California, which is a pretty decent move,” he said.
Seattle-based Zillow Group operates a series of apps and websites, including Trulia.com. The Canadian listings will be concentrated on Zillow.com to begin with, said a company spokesperson.