Zillow Premier Agent is a paid lead generation service which connects agents with prospective buyers and sellers on the Zillow platform. As part of the Premier Agent program, Zillow sells the ‘Contact Agent’ box on listings featured on Zillow, Trulia and StreetEasy to paying agents.
This means that the ‘Contact Agent’ box for listings on Zillow, Trulia and StreetEasy does not actually connect the prospective buyer with the actual listing agent in most cases.
Instead, the buyer is rerouted to a buyer’s agent who pays Zillow to receive buyer leads for the particular neighborhood where the listing is located.
Buyers who wish to contact a listing agent directly on Zillow must instead manually look-up the contact information of the listing agent. The listing agent’s information is disclosed both on the Zillow search results interface as well as on the listing itself. However, there is no one-click or automatic way to contact the listing agent directly from Zillow.
Listing agent information disclosed in Zillow search results:
Listing agent information disclosed on each Zillow listing:
StreetEasy, which is owned by Zillow, makes it slightly easier to contact a listing agent directly. While the ‘Contact Agent’ box on StreetEasy still defaults to a Zillow Premier Agent, there is typically a hyperlink at the bottom of the contact box which routes buyers to a StreetEasy profile page for the listing agent:
This profile page contains a direct contact box for the listing agent and also discloses the phone number of the listing agent:
Zillow utilizes an auction bidding system to set its Premier Agent pricing. Neighborhoods with pricier homes, such as SoHo or Tribeca in Manhattan, have a higher cost per lead compared to less expensive areas such as Jackson Heights in Queens.
The Zillow Premier Agent program is a huge source of revenue for Zillow Group, Inc., which is a large publicly traded company with a market capitalization north of $10 billion.
Zillow Premier Agent generated revenue of $1,046,954,000 during 2020. The program generated roughly $900 million in revenue in the two years prior (2019 and 2018), as shown below.
Zillow Premier Agent offers several other advertising services, include paid placement in its search results for agents as well as other 3rd parties:
The Zillow Premier Agent program is rather controversial due to the fact that consumers who click the ‘Contact Agent’ button aren’t necessarily aware that they may be connected to someone other than the listing agent. As a result, Zillow’s Premier Agent program has been the subject of numerous lawsuits over the past few years.
