This post was inspired by an agent I spoke with the other day who was looking for a way to put Zillow-like information on her website.  Her philosophy is that since the consumer is using sites like Zillow, she’d rather provide them with a way to get instant home values on her site.  She has to deal with managing client expecations regardless of how they got their expectations set in the first place.

Zillow

When the Zillow  site first hit the Internet, many people in the real estate industry were not happy.  There was (and still is) controversy over the accuracy of the information provided on the site.  Real estate professionals often felt they had to work even harder to manage the expectations of home buyers and sellers who took the home valuation information provided on the site as gospel, regardless of how factual it was.

But, Zillow caught the imagination of the online consumer community, and they’ve become mainstream, even in the real estate community.  Zillow participates in industry gatherings.  Many agents promote their homes on the Zillow website, and Zillow is making efforts to be agent-friendly.

Ever Wonder How the Site Got Its Name?

Here’s the explanation straight from the horse’s mouth (emphasis added).

“‘Zillow’ evolved from the desire to make zillions of data points for homes accessible to everyone. But a home is about more than data – it is where you lay your head to rest at night, like a pillow. Thus, ‘Zillow’ was born.”

Integrating Zillow on Your Website

You can offer Zillow searches on your website without becoming a coding expert.  There are three ways to do that, by placing a snippet of code where you want the Zillow searches to appear: 

1. A ”Widget” – This code snippet is intended to be used in a side column to provide a quick search.  In testing it out, however, I found that the image displayed is 250px wide and doesn’t work otherwise.  Most side columns I see are not wide enough to accommodate the image, but it can be used in wider columns.
2. A Framed Zestimate Search
3. A Framed Comparable Search

Visit our website to see live samples of all three alternatives.

Getting the Code

There are a few hoops you need to jump through to get the code for your real estate website.

1. Create an account on the Zillow site.
2. Obtain a Zillow API Key.  If you’re not familiar with API keys, don’t worry about it.  It’s just a number that identifies you to their system.
3. Copy the code from the Zillow website.
4. Paste the code into the HTML portion of the editor on your website or provide it to your webmaster.

You can accomplish the first three steps by visiting the “ZillowLite” page on their website.  There is a link that says: Get a Zillow Web Services ID on that page.  Click that link to set up a Zillow Account, after which you will be directed to the place where you can obtain the ID number.  Then, return to the page you were on originally to copy the code.

So, what do you think?  Would you put access to Zillow on your website?