After seeing quite a bit of uproar in real estate industry circles about Zillow’s new “Coming Soon” feature (a.k.a. pocket listings for dummies) last month, I decided to see how popular actual usage of the feature was a few weeks after the big launch. After all, actions speak louder than words.
Last week I spent some time gathering data on Zillow to see how many “Coming Soon” listings there were on the site, state-by-state across the entire nation. In order to give us something to compare to, I also grabbed the number of “Make Me Move” (a.k.a. delusional owner dream machine) and “For Sale By Owner” (a.k.a. make me an obvious lead target for desperate listing agents) listings, two of Zillow’s other off-MLS categories.
Below is a Tableau heat map of the results normalized by each state’s population (zoom out to view Alaska and Hawaii, or shift-click and drag to pan the map). As you can see, agents who can use “Coming Soon” have so far been slow to do so. This should not be surprising, considering that many MLSs across the country forbid this kind of practice from their members, just like NWMLS does.
So far, the feature is most popular least ignored in Missouri and Nevada—the only two states with more than four “Coming Soon” listings per 1 million residents. Thirteen states had no “Coming Soon” listings at all when I pulled this data from Zillow last week.
Obviously this feature has a long ways to go before it will even come close to the popularity of “Make Me Move,” whose lowest state rate was 56 listings per million residents in Louisiana. The state with the highest rate of “Make Me Move” listings was Washington, with 587 per million residents. The highest rate for FSBO listings was 823 per million residents in Vermont, while the lowest was 73 listings per million residents in California.
On the day I pulled this data the four “Coming Soon” listings in Washington were all either in the Vancouver or Spokane areas (both served by different MLSs). Interestingly, there are now two “Coming Soon” listings in the Seattle area, one in Snohomish and one in Issaquah. Both of the listing agents, Nathanael Hasselbeck of NWG Real Estate and Darrell Parker of Parker Property, LLC appear to be NWMLS members, so I’m a bit surprised to see them openly flout the rules like this, given how fine-happy the NWMLS has been in the past. But hey, they did have to check a box, so I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.
[Update: As of 3PM, both of these Seattle-area “Coming Soon” listings have been removed.]
Katie Curnutte, a Zillow spokeswoman, said that they were aware of the NWMLS rules when they launched the service. She said they respect those rules, and are not actively encouraging agents to break them.
“It is a marketing tool for agents, so they need to follow the marketing rules of their own MLS and brokerage,” she said. If agents are not acting within the rules of the local MLS, Curnutte said they will remove the “coming soon” listing. She also noted that agents must check a box that they are complying with local MLS rules before posting.
It will be interesting to see what these numbers look like a year from now. So far, all the outrage and concern in the agent community seems to be much ado about nothing.
If you prefer simple text-based tables to Tableau, click through below for all the data in a single table, sortable by clicking the column headers.
| State | Coming Soon | CS-Rate | Make Me Move | MM-Rate | FSBO | FSBO-Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | 1 | 1.4 | 114 | 155.1 | 284 | 386.3 |
| Alabama | 3 | 0.6 | 644 | 133.2 | 2,207 | 456.6 |
| Arkansas | 1 | 0.3 | 374 | 126.4 | 1,757 | 593.7 |
| Arizona | 26 | 3.9 | 1,883 | 284.2 | 1,800 | 271.6 |
| California | 134 | 3.5 | 6,103 | 159.2 | 2,788 | 72.7 |
| Colorado | 14 | 2.7 | 2,286 | 433.9 | 1,576 | 299.1 |
| Connecticut | 1 | 0.3 | 819 | 227.7 | 779 | 216.6 |
| District Of Columbia | 1 | 1.5 | 196 | 303.2 | 64 | 99.0 |
| Delaware | 2 | 2.2 | 182 | 196.6 | 265 | 286.3 |
| Florida | 60 | 3.1 | 1,996 | 102.1 | 7,644 | 390.9 |
| Georgia | 8 | 0.8 | 2,256 | 225.8 | 3,342 | 334.5 |
| Hawaii | 1 | 0.7 | 151 | 107.5 | 108 | 76.9 |
| Iowa | 0 | 0.0 | 294 | 95.1 | 1,708 | 552.7 |
| Idaho | 3 | 1.9 | 306 | 189.8 | 684 | 424.3 |
| Illinois | 7 | 0.5 | 2,431 | 188.7 | 3,796 | 294.7 |
| Indiana | 1 | 0.2 | 841 | 128.0 | 2,388 | 363.4 |
| Kansas | 4 | 1.4 | 261 | 90.2 | 1,015 | 350.7 |
| Kentucky | 0 | 0.0 | 450 | 102.4 | 1,962 | 446.4 |
| Louisiana | 1 | 0.2 | 261 | 56.4 | 1,643 | 355.2 |
| Massachusetts | 4 | 0.6 | 1,586 | 237.0 | 1,075 | 160.6 |
| Maryland | 8 | 1.3 | 1,413 | 238.3 | 1,040 | 175.4 |
| Maine | 0 | 0.0 | 142 | 106.9 | 623 | 469.0 |
| Michigan | 4 | 0.4 | 1,944 | 196.5 | 3,939 | 398.1 |
| Minnesota | 3 | 0.6 | 1,141 | 210.5 | 1,045 | 192.8 |
| Missouri | 35 | 5.8 | 1,165 | 192.7 | 2,507 | 414.8 |
| Mississippi | 0 | 0.0 | 189 | 63.2 | 1,094 | 365.7 |
| Montana | 0 | 0.0 | 128 | 126.1 | 526 | 518.1 |
| North Carolina | 7 | 0.7 | 2,396 | 243.3 | 3,752 | 381.0 |
| North Dakota | 0 | 0.0 | 44 | 60.8 | 240 | 331.8 |
| Nebraska | 0 | 0.0 | 176 | 94.2 | 766 | 410.0 |
| New Hampshire | 1 | 0.8 | 198 | 149.6 | 388 | 293.2 |
| New Jersey | 9 | 1.0 | 1,497 | 168.2 | 2,390 | 268.6 |
| New Mexico | 0 | 0.0 | 259 | 124.2 | 685 | 328.5 |
| Nevada | 12 | 4.3 | 565 | 202.5 | 444 | 159.1 |
| New York | 4 | 0.2 | 2,150 | 109.4 | 4,854 | 247.0 |
| Ohio | 14 | 1.2 | 2,252 | 194.6 | 4,164 | 359.9 |
| Oklahoma | 1 | 0.3 | 678 | 176.1 | 1,762 | 457.6 |
| Oregon | 5 | 1.3 | 1,741 | 443.0 | 1,422 | 361.8 |
| Pennsylvania | 5 | 0.4 | 2,019 | 158.1 | 3,403 | 266.4 |
| Rhode Island | 2 | 1.9 | 206 | 195.9 | 186 | 176.9 |
| South Carolina | 9 | 1.9 | 985 | 206.3 | 2,022 | 423.5 |
| South Dakota | 0 | 0.0 | 50 | 59.2 | 238 | 281.7 |
| Tennessee | 7 | 1.1 | 1,668 | 256.8 | 2,994 | 460.9 |
| Texas | 35 | 1.3 | 3,485 | 131.8 | 4,897 | 185.2 |
| Utah | 0 | 0.0 | 903 | 311.3 | 973 | 335.4 |
| Virginia | 13 | 1.6 | 2,042 | 247.2 | 2,407 | 291.4 |
| Vermont | 0 | 0.0 | 73 | 116.5 | 516 | 823.5 |
| Washington | 4 | 0.6 | 4,093 | 587.1 | 2,402 | 344.6 |
| Wisconsin | 8 | 1.4 | 811 | 141.2 | 2,422 | 421.8 |
| West Virginia | 0 | 0.0 | 151 | 81.4 | 641 | 345.7 |
| Wyoming | 0 | 0.0 | 60 | 103.0 | 275 | 472.0 |
| US Total | 458 | 1.4 | 58,058 | 183.7 | 91,902 | 290.7 |
Data in this post was collected from Zillow.com on June 30, 2014.
For some reason the NWMLS hasn’t directly warned agents about Coming Soon, other than a recent Legal Bulletin dealing with related issues which came out well before Zillow announced. Most firms seemingly have warned their agents.
Also, check you Zillow’s Youtube video at 48 seconds. Sure they knew about the NWMLS rule. /sarc (Why don’t links appear????)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnAu90iM7Mw
The Youtube link appeared. Rewatching the video this might be something only open to “Zillow Premier Agents” which I believe are agents who pay Zillow money each month. That would clearly limit its use, and both explain the results Tim is finding and also make it even less useful.
I am on your website. I cannot see how to list a property near Duvall, WA.
By Kary L. Krismer @ 2:
Yes, that is accurate. They stated that in their initial announcement: http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2014-06-12-Zillow-Introduces-Coming-Soon-Inventory
The hatchet jobs on Zillow made sense while Tim was employed at Redfin. Now that he has moved on to Porch, I don’t get it. I am sure Porch’s growth on every single product is not impressive either. But wait, Zillow’s Digs does overlap Porch’s turf. Ok, carry on then.
RE: SG @ 5 – Other than some agents in some other states, have you heard anyone say anything good about Zillow’s Coming Soon? I haven’t and I’ve been following it fairly closely. At least one consumer group hates it.
Seemingly it only benefits the listing agent, possibly at the expense of their client.
Also, how is this a hatchet job? Do you dispute the data? Maybe Tim was being a bit overly optimistic as to the number of pre-listings possible, but it does seem like it’s not very successful–perhaps for a reason.
IMO it’s an attempt for Zillow to try to get more “Premier Agents” signed up… however, I don’t see why a seller would want to do this when they can list their home as “make me move”, if they wanted to.
RE: Rhonda Porter @ 7 – Good insight, Rhonda. You’re right that the Zillow model now uses its famed “zestimates” merely as a lead generator for traditional agents. In that light, this feature may have more value. It’s one more bell and/or whistle to entice new advertisers (real estate brokers).