The Zillow Home Search: 3 Tips for Agents

The most successful real estate agent I know is a master of predictive assistance. When it comes to her clients’ needs, she is proactive, not reactive. She doesn’t wait for her buyers to tell her about new listings they find online — she finds them first. She doesn’t wait to react to her sellers’ imminent concerns about the difference between their Zestimate® home values and appraisals — she tackles that conversation head-on with facts.

Always one step ahead, she often knows what her clients need before they realize it themselves. She’s successful because she stays in tune with the apps and websites that buyers and sellers use; they all speak a common digital language.

A simple way to improve your predictive assistance game is to get fluent with the Zillow home search process. Specifically, you should learn the search tools on the Zillow mobile app. More than 232 homes were viewed per second on Zillow Mobile last month. You can bet your clients use it, so you should too.

Here are three tips to get you started.

1. Draw your own home search boundaries

After opening the Zillow app, you can search for homes by entering your criteria and filters. At the highest level, you can choose the location where you want to view listings. Just enter a city, ZIP code or neighborhood in the search bar.

But let’s say you want to view listings in a large area spanning local boundaries — Zillow makes that easy. Just use the Draw tool below the map to draw your own search boundary. You can even draw several boundaries if you have multiple areas to search.

2. Filter search results to prospect for listings and find comparable sales

After choosing a location, you can use search filters to narrow down the selection of homes based on listing type. Agents can take advantage of this feature to win new listings. For example, if you want to prospect Make Me Move and For Sale By Owner listings, you can change the filters to display only those results. You can also use the filters to display recently sold properties, so you can pull up comparable sales on the fly.

Once you choose the types of listings you want to see, you can filter the results by price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, time on market and more.

3. Use saved searches and notifications for instant access

If this seems like an awful lot of screen tapping just to search for homes on Zillow, try this time-saving tip: Save each of your searches and easily check them on the go. Just tap the Save Search link at the bottom of the Search or Results pages, then choose a title for each of your searches.

Another successful agent I know sets up a saved search for each of his buyers based on their needs. He titles each saved search with the buyer’s name to keep track of what they’re viewing. He stays current by turning on push notifications or email alerts for his buyers’ searches. When new listings come on the market, he gets the same alerts as his buyers.

It’s easy to understand why buyers and sellers look for real estate agents they can relate to. Communication is key in this industry, and communicating successfully with your clients is so much easier when you are familiar with the tools and processes they use. Knowing the ins and outs of the Zillow home search process is essential: It gives you the ability to see eye-to-eye with today’s real estate consumer, predict their needs and be a more effective agent.