The expansion is part of Zillow’s ‘Enhanced Markets’ program, which is currently running in six cities, and is part of the company’s efforts to eventually build a real estate ‘super app’.
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Portal giant Zillow revealed this week that it is expanding its “Enhanced Markets” program to two new cities, notably including an exclusive “postpaid” version of Premier Agent.
The expansion extends Zillow’s enhanced market program to Charlotte and Durham, North Carolina. The program was first announced a year ago, when Zillow said it was piloting the concept in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Denver, Colorado. Since then, the enhanced market program has expanded to Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia, making Charlotte and Durham his fifth and sixth cities to introduce the program.
For agents, perhaps the most relevant part of the enhanced market program is how it handles Zillow’s popular lead generation service, Premier Agent. Traditionally, agents who join Premier Agents pay leads up front in hopes of closing deals later.
However, in the postpaid version, the agent doesn’t pay anything until the deal is closed. When the deal is closed, the agent pays a “success fee”. Fees vary depending on the sale price of the property and location, but are generally between 30% and 35% of the participating agent’s commission.
However, perhaps the most eye-catching part of the postpaid model is that it is only available by invitation to high-performing agents. This means that in a market that switches from a well-known prepaid model to a postpaid model, many premier his agents and his users will be excluded from the program.
Both this week and a year ago, Zillow declined to say exactly how many agents could be cut by switching to a postpaid model. But when the program launched in Raleigh and Denver last year, the company said it would eventually cut “hundreds” of agents while “hundreds” would stay in premier agents.
Perhaps something similar will happen in Charlotte and Durham.
News of Charlotte and Durham’s move to a postpaid model sparked a stir on social media, with some commenting. frame the movement As the end of premier agent.
But Zillow said the Inman Premier Agent isn’t over yet. What’s happening now is just a shift from one payment model to another in some markets. The company also said that both prepaid and postpaid models continue to be important long-term parts of its corporate strategy.
The postpaid model has existed in some form since 2019 under the name ‘Flex’, but is available in other markets through invitation. The remarkable thing about the Enhanced Market is that it only works with the postpaid version of Premier Agent.
Zillow also told Inman that a postpaid model is just one part of a broader strategy for an enhanced market. Aside from the change to Premier Agents, the enhanced Market will also give access to a range of other features, including the Real-Time Tour that debuted in Atlanta last year.
The enhanced marketplace is also where Zillow is testing its ability to integrate various other services, such as Zillow mortgages.
These efforts are all part of Zillow’s much-hyped effort to eventually build a real estate “super app,” which the company announced shortly after it pulled out of iBuying. There is currently no such app widely available to consumers. However, Zillow’s enhanced market expansion shows that the company is aggressively working on and extending features that are likely to become part of the app one day.
In connection with SuperApps, Zillow announced last week that it promoted Jeremy Hoffman, an executive who has played a key role in the SuperApps program, to the position of Chief Financial Officer.
We don’t yet know the impact of the super app, but agents will be most interested in changes to their lead generation toolkit for the foreseeable future. That’s what Zillow CEO Rich Burton said. I have written Earlier this month, to champion a unified network of agents best at converting leads.
“We increasingly believe that a tighter set of partners will enable us to deliver a better customer experience and rapidly test new products and services in the middle of our integration services,” writes Barton.
Email Jim Dalrymple II
