#438 – The Mail-Right Show: Zillow Premier & Flex What Do You Need to Know?

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Zillow Premier & Flex: What Do You Need to Know?

Maximize your real estate experience with Zillow Premier & Flex—everything you need to know – right at your fingertips.

In this informative show, we delve into the essential details of Zillow Premier and Flex services, exploring how they can elevate your real estate experience. Discover key features, benefits, and tips on leveraging these tools effectively to achieve your property goals. Stay ahead in the competitive market with this insightful guide.

#1 – The Basic outline of Zillow Premier Agent

#2 – Zillow Premier Agent vs. Zillow Flex

#3 – Zillow Premier Agent and Zillow Flex key strengths and weaknesses?

#4 – Zillow Flex Payment Structure Explained

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:11.180] – Robert Newman

Okay, welcome back to the Mail-Right Show, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:00:15.150] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you count down and go into it, can you?

[00:00:18.560] – Robert Newman

Okay. I got to reset. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mailright Show. It’s episode number 438. Today, we will discuss Everybody’s favorite lead generation providers, Zillow Premier and Flex. We will do our best to tell you what you need. We’re going to get into this. I want to do a preamble to the show, but before I do, I have my co-host who chose the subject today. Indeed, something that we should talk about, something I usually loathe talking about. But before I get into my end of that, John, why don’t you go ahead and… You know what? I’d like you to do two things. I would like you to introduce yourself, and I have yet to ask him this question offline. Two, I would like you to explain to me and everybody else why you chose this as the subject for today’s show.

[00:01:22.300] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, to start with your question, my feelings are very similar to yours, but we haven’t discussed it for a long time. Because we’ve got certain reservations about Zillow and these two offerings, they are still producing tons of leads. I am curious to know if this is still accurate. Last year, 90 million people went to the Zillow website, and I don’t know how many actual leads they generated through these two particular offerings. I don’t know if that data is publicly available. I would imagine not. But they are a reality, and they’re a big reality in the real estate space, even though I’ve got stronger problems with them. So that’s it. And I am the founder of Melright. We’re a platform. We build great-looking websites on WordPress at affordable prices. Plus, we have a CRM and many other fantastic digital tools in one affordable platform. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:02:46.860] – Robert Newman

All right. My name is Robert Newman. For those who do not know, I’m the founder of a real estate marketing company called InboundREM. We focus on inbound marketing methods like SEO, things like that story lead attraction conversion methodologies. We’re the only people in the US who are currently focused on inbound and real estate, specifically. You can check out more at inboundrem. Com, if you so choose. I have a lot of reservations about Zillow, mainly because of Richard Barton, who is the founder of not only Zillow but also Expedia and Nextdoor, and quite a few more internet companies than most people realize. Even I only realized some of what he had his hands in. Artie, for those who are into art, is also the founder and creator of that. He tends to take really broad, antiquated industries and bring them all online. In the process, he makes it extremely difficult for smaller companies to compete. In a way, you have to admire his vision. But if you’re in the real estate industry and you are buying Zillow leads, you are funding your competition at this point. Undoubtedly, he intended to consolidate as he has already done for Expedia.

[00:04:15.360] – Robert Newman

I don’t care what you hear anybody say; look at the past logic. This is just my opinion. I don’t have any insider knowledge. I have yet to talk to Richard Barton. Look at what he did at Xpedia, and then look at what he’s doing with Zillow. They follow identical business growth timelines at Expedia. They cried all the way up to the heavens that they would never become a travel agency. Of course, they actually did. And he’s been saying the same thing with Zillow, and of course, they are actually a real estate company. They’re competing against all of you. This is not your friend. And when they really consolidate their operations, my opinion, Union is, is that they are going to have their Zillow teams get the vast majority of the best leads, sell all of you the less qualified leads, or certainly prioritize their salespeople in some way, shape or form, take a healthy percentage for doing this and call it a day. When you buy from them, and everybody always says, Oh, I know this, I know this, I know this, but it’s been getting worse and worse. We’re going to highlight the programs.

[00:05:29.960] – Robert Newman

They do sell a good lead. I won’t misrepresent, but that’s my qualifier to even get into this subject with John and talk about it. I firmly believe that every person who buys a lead, a single lead from Zillow, is funding one of their own strongest, best-backed competitors and that this is going to become a bigger and bigger problem for you over time, and everybody is just ignoring it, thinking that, well, it’s not today’s problem. That’s what I have to say about that. John, do you have anything you’d like to add?

[00:06:11.590] – Jonathan Denwood

No, I basically agree with everything you outlined. It’s quite a bizarre situation that many agents decide to do business with an organization that has made it clear that its final destination is to get rid of agents to some extent.

[00:06:36.860] – Robert Newman

Yeah. I think that it’s going to be… The more money that we give Zillow, the better of a platform they create, but the harder it is for the individual agent to do business without them. Zillow is training these new agents, and now they’re effectively becoming agents who only know how to work with Zillow leads.

[00:06:57.050] – Jonathan Denwood

I think their main problem is Google, because they have quite a bit of power in the real estate industry. But compared to Google, their memo they’re nothing. They’re a flee on the back of Google, aren’t they?

[00:07:16.850] – Robert Newman

Yeah, you know I can’t agree more with that. That is why we keep talking about HyperLocal. Hyperlocal is the solution to this. Google is a friendlier company and they’re not trying to put real estate agents out of business. Whereas Zillow, you cannot say the same. Without any further ado, we’re going to get into what we are going to discuss today is the Zillow, the basic outline. Here’s the four quadrants that we have ready to queue up and talk to everybody about. The basic outline of Zillow Premier Agent, Zillow Premier Agent versus Zillow Flex, Zillow Premier Agent and Zillow Flex: Key strengths and weaknesses, and the Zillow Flex Payment Structure Explained. John has done a very good job at adding some links in the show notes. For those of you who are interested in finding out where the source or some of our information is, please go to the MailRight website or the MailRight Facebook page and take a look at it. I will probably be posting forwarding this show into a private Facebook group and maybe my public Facebook page. I am not as proactive as John, so if you really want to get into the details of the show, definitely look on the MailRight site First.

[00:08:30.590] – Robert Newman

Without further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and jump into this? Because I didn’t do all the research that you did.

[00:08:39.870] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, Premier Agent is their main platform. It’s what they built the business on. Basically, they’re selling leads, folks. People go to the Zillow website to do searches, pop-ups, sidebar advertising. There’s advertising all over the website, and they want to get your name, an email, and phone number. And they… Certain properties, one of the things that really annoys a lot of agencies, they show a property, they have an agent underneath. That agent isn’t representing the seller or buyer. It can be somebody that has no real connection to the property, and they influence people to presume differently. Then that lead is sold to a group of agents, and basically, it’s computerized. They look at different metrics. How quickly does the agent respond to the initial lead? They look at a multiple of inputs in deciding on a rotation basis, who’s going to get the lead in a Pacific area. The more competitive the territory, i. E. Urbanize city, not only will the cost per lead go up considerably, but the rotation, the quality of lead you obtain and the rotation basis will increase. And the cost, who knows? Because that really depends on where you are based.

[00:10:57.790] – Jonathan Denwood

Are you based in Los Angeles? Are you based in Las Vegas? Are you based in Florida? Or you’re based in some small town in Kansas? It really depends on where you are. So that is the basic outline. Would you agree with that, Robert?

[00:11:18.620] – Robert Newman

Yeah. Well, yes. And you know what? Just in the brief time you’ve been talking, I managed to read and update my knowledge on the Zillowlex versus Zillowpremier. I’ve realized that they renamed one of these plans, or at least since the last time I looked at it, Zillowlex. Zillowlex is competing with a division of realtor. Com, which we used to be called Opsity, and for all I know, they’ve changed it, but it’s basically performance pay and plan. Anyway, and Premier is their standard advertising plan, which While I didn’t know the brand names, John, I can certainly talk about the hundreds, if not thousands of agents that I’ve talked to that have been using that plan or have used it in the past or will use it in the future. Premier Agent It usually comes down to what I’ve found in terms of pricing. It is a price on demand program. In other words, pricing is not flat. If they have open zip codes and available leads, they will charge you maybe as little as $600 a But if they have a lot of agents in line for a single zip code, I’ve heard of that price going up to upwards of $3,000 per zip code or per area, and no guarantee that you’re not going to get competition.

[00:12:43.460] – Robert Newman

The thing about Premier that I’ve understood is that over the years, they’ve been trying to ramp up the quality of the leads in terms of having a person call and verify that it is really a lead because needless to say, agents were… It used to be incredibly irate when somebody would call to, let’s say, ask them to rent a home, and you just spent $600 to get that person to call you in the first place. There’s been a lot of changes with Zillow Premier. Like any other lead generation program, a lot of what is going to be your results, the people listening to the show, is going to be based on how many people are using them in your area. Zillow is one of the least friendly companies when it comes to revealing any information about If you’re trying to research and say, All right, I, as a broker or an agent, would like to make an educated decision about whether or not I use these guys as a lead source, and let’s say they quote you $3,000 a month for your zip code that you’re interested in, that’s a lot of money. I don’t care who you are, what agent you are.

[00:13:47.030] – Robert Newman

That’s a lot of money. So now you got to… Then you ask the question, Well, how many other people are using it? They will never tell you.

[00:13:54.070] – Jonathan Denwood

No, never.

[00:13:57.850] – Robert Newman

You absolutely do Now, you just have to take the plunge. Some people will be successful and some people won’t. My advice for Zillow with higher priced zip codes, and you’re an agent with no sales experience, is probably going to be to avoid them. Not because they couldn’t be successful, but because you will get limited times at bat, you need to bleed in practice as opposed to die in war with these guys. You can’t spend that much money on any lead program unless it’s going to be like a WALOPO or somebody who’s going to give you a 100 leads. So you get 100 at bats, and you get to get the marbles out of your mouth and basically get better at lead response with small leads that are not… You have more at Bats. Some of them won’t be any good, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to try your scripts and your practices on people who are really contacting you through a lead generation source. Zillow, you might get eight at Bats.

[00:14:55.960] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you’ve touched. You really You really got to be on top of your game on your response. When that comes through the app, you got to respond and win up the prospect. You got to be on the top of your game, and you got to have your scripts practiced, and you got to be on your top game, because otherwise… And to be fair to them, if you don’t respond and you haven’t polished your scripts, they’re going to probably reduce the amount of leads they’re sending your way as well. So you got to really- You’ll get kicked out of the flex program, but we’re going to talk about that in a second when we come back from break.

[00:15:46.170] – Robert Newman

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to go to break really quick. Once we do, when we come back, we’re going to quickly compare Zillowlex versus Zillow Premiere, and then we’re going to cover the last remaining topics, and we’ll be much faster about it. Super sorry to both John and the audience for the preamble. I believe very strongly in this. I can’t do a show without saying it. That’s all I got. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, Ladies and gentlemen to episode number 438 of the MailRight Show. Today, we’re discussing Zillow Premier and Flex. These are two paid lead advertising programs that you can find through Zillow. We’ve We’ve covered the basics and maybe even not the basics of the Zillow Premier program. Coming back from break, we’re going to start off by comparing Premier Agent with Zillow Flex, and I’m going to leverage my amazing co-host and say, John, why don’t you start us off with what you think the… Give us a versus in your head about these two programs.

[00:16:50.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, the Flex program is invite only. There is no upfront fees. The bad news is if If you sell a property or there’s a commission, they want 35% of it. There’s two methodologies. They monitor you, they will ring you up. There’s a app, a specific app that you got to fill in all the details of the conversations you’ve had, how are things progressing. Periodically, one of Their team will look over it, contact you, confirm. I think you get a couple of options about how you pay. It can either go through the title company or you can do it by sending them a check. If you try and get out of it, they will pursue you to hell. They will not mess around. So don’t think you can mess them around because that ain’t going to work. And like I would say it’s invite only. You got to be a top-tier performer in their eyes to be the invite. You got to have some credibility with them. You really got to make your decision because they want 35%. It is going to be the lead. Quality, in my opinion, is going to be of a different level to Zillow Premier.

[00:18:32.340] – Jonathan Denwood

But I say, you pay for that. I don’t think it’s worthwhile. I think if you’re that experienced type agent with a power team or your small brokerage with a power team, I think you should be looking at other methodologies. I would look at Google Local Service Ads, or I’ll look at Facebook, or I look at anything. It’s not yourself, but you’re an adult. You got to make your choice, haven’t you, Robert?

[00:19:05.140] – Robert Newman

Yeah. Here’s my overall thoughts, like vast. John was kind enough, and I really strongly, I’m going to tell you all this. After looking at the material that John provided, John found a really excellent Reddit thread on the subject of flex. Blissfully, I’m a very fast reader, so I’ve read most of that thread, John, I can tell you that it was a really great find because it talks in very… It’s a realtor, number one on the thread. It’s a new realtor, a husband and wife team, and we’re comparing Premier through flex. Well, I’m a lifetime marketer, and generally speaking, as a lifetime marketer, and most of you will intuit this, you always want to own your lead source. To the best of your ability, you want to own your lead source. Now, there is no such thing for realtors, but Google is a better option because they don’t take a flat percentage of your business. As a matter of fact, they don’t even come close. The cost of a Google lead currently hovers at about 3% of the cost of a Zillow lead. Or for those of you who are not great at math, that’s 97% better on the price.

[00:20:21.590] – Robert Newman

You’re talking about, and that’s a paid lead, that’s through their LSAs, that’s through hyper local that you pay an ad for. They’re charging $45 to $100 not charging you any closing percentage. Zillowlex changed their rules, and they will charge you upwards of 40%, is what the number is, according to the Reddit thread. They increased it to 40, have they? That’s what the Reddit thread said. I don’t know this to be true, ladies and gentlemen. I have only read it on this thread, but it’s a realtor saying that they raised the price with a comment on homes above $300,000, which was a big price for their market at that time. So the bigger the deal, the bigger the percentage, plus that particular realtor had a 50/50 split with their broker, meaning that they had to go… They were basically losing 60 to 80% of their income and keep them 20 to have their lead source. Now, I just want to say between Premier and Flex, the sad news is that for brand new realtors, the only advantage My advantage for using Flex is if you’re young, your expenses are low, maybe you’re directly out of college, and you’re trying to learn real estate, and you’re driven, determined, and anxious to learn a career, then I think actually Flex is an amazing opportunity for you.

[00:21:50.460] – Robert Newman

You are effectively, yes, you’ll give up your income in a very big margin. But guess what, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t freaking matter if you don’t have the skills. You’ll learn the skills. The program through Zillow will help you teach you the skills. Hopefully, your broker, if they’re taking a 50% cut, I hope they’re teaching is something. If they’re not, you need to change the broker’s stat because you should be giving them that income to learn their processes, their operations, how their transaction coordinator handles the deal, what you say at open houses, and what you say when you’re on the phone with the lead. All those things are institutional knowledge that somebody paid a dear price to learn. If they’re going to teach it to you, they have every right to charge you a percentage, in my opinion, and a significant one. However, if you know all those things, guess what, guys? If you’re listening to this show, there are a lot of veteran agents who are laughing because you know you’d never, ever use flex in this or any other universe. You might use Premiere because you’re willing to pay if the is good enough and your conversion rate is high enough.

[00:23:03.180] – Robert Newman

For you, that person listening to the show Zillow Premier might be good. Now, I will end this by saying the comparison is usually super simple. The problem for all of you is that Zillow still needs to lower its prices, and the market has become significantly more challenging than it was two years ago. If you weren’t making a big profit in buying leads, you’d lose your hat right now. You are just going to get crushed. Many of you are getting crushed. I know because I’m getting the calls. That is also the difference between owning a thing and leasing a thing. When you own a thing, which is what John and I both counsel to you, when the industry gets hard like this, even if you fired us, I want to be really clear: even if you stopped paying us, you still own the platform, the platform might generate you a minimal amount of leads, but that’s whatever. If it was one that is a million times better than Zillow, who would give it? But I’ll give you none while you’re waiting for the market to change. That’s my comparison against the two. Would you happen to have anything else that you want to add now that I’ve said my bit, or should we go on to…

[00:24:29.420] – Robert Newman

Or did we? How do you cover the strengths and weaknesses?

[00:24:32.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I think we have, don’t we? I think we can wrap it up. I totally agree with what you just said, basically. I think there are specific scenarios, certain situations, and agents. With the flex, it’s really just a rename or premiere. It’s another layer of premier aimed at brokers. They choose a broker; the broker gets his cut. If you’re that agent, you can stomach it, and you’re only going to make 20%, probably. If you’re not that young, inexperienced, or just an inexperienced agent with that particular brokerage, I don’t think it’s worth getting involved in that in any shape or form. But that’s just my personal opinion, Rob.

[00:25:33.320] – Robert Newman

Yeah, if you’re an agent bouncing around, flex is… I’m going to guess. This is just a guess, but I only get a few super veteran agents even talking about the opposite of your flex. I get it’s like the red agents you love discussing. People in their first year, like one through year five, all of these discount systems like Zillowlex and Opcity, blah, blah, blah, blah, they’re all worth considering. Anything where anybody’s teaching you with more significant support, giving you customers to get in front of. All of that is an excellent way to get your experience in. I might do that if I were getting into real estate, do a year working these paid leads because, effectively, I’m being told what to do and where to go, and the vast majority of the work is done for me because I hate to break it to everybody. But getting your customers is about 50% of your real estate business or more. After that, it comes down to selling the home and getting the transaction. Those are very big. This is part of the pie, too. But one of the hardest things is finding a new supply of fresh clients month in and month out so that you can make a very good living.

[00:26:42.320] – Robert Newman

The lower your marketplace’s price point, the more customers you have to find. Louisiana, West Virginia, you guys need 30, 40, 50 deals a year to make significant income. The rest of the country is more dramatic than that, but those places certainly are. Listen, everybody, we’ll end the show a few minutes early today because the subject was pretty cut and dry. I’m just going to say that for those of you who heeded my preamble at the beginning, Premier will give you a good lead. It’ll give you a good buyer’s lead, and it’ll give you a so-so seller’s lead. If you have a budget and you’re looking to spend it someplace, I suppose you could spend it here. I don’t really recommend it unless you just absolutely have to have leads for a team or something like that. There’s a very limited number of case studies in which I would say you’d be better served to use local service ads and Google advertising and drive it into your own website. Your conversion rates will be better, but for those of you who are determined, you could build in internal systems similar to Zillow’s and own the whole process from start to finish. Any determined agent or broker would be better served doing that.

[00:28:05.000] – Robert Newman

That’s what I’ve got to say.

[00:28:08.140] – Jonathan Denwood

That sounds great to me. Can I wrap it up now, Rob?

[00:28:11.040] – Robert Newman

Okay. Thank you so much for tuning into the show, Jon; if you would like to have people reach out to you or find you somewhere, ask you some questions, or compare the MailRight system versus Zillow, Premiere, or Flex, how would you like them to reach out to you?

[00:28:28.690] – Jonathan Denwood

Thanks for that, Rob. It’s basically really simple. Just go over to the mail-right. com and have a look around the website. You’ll be able to book a free chat with me. If you have any questions or need any quick advice, I’ll be more than happy to have a chat with you. Back over to you, Rob.

[00:28:44.840] – Robert Newman

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to contact me or find out how InboundREM compares against Zillow or Flex, you can go to inboundREM. Com, look at my services or About pages. There are contact forms on both. You can get into my calendar directly, or you can talk to one of my team members. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we so much appreciate you tuning into the show. Like us, wherever you find us, share with us with other people who you think are new agents in the industry. It is essential that you all understand that new agents fuel many veteran agents’ worst problems in the real estate industry. Please share this show with those that you think might get some value from it. It will impact you well over time. And with that, sir, take us offline.