I am going to list my house in Gulf Breeze, FL this spring. I thought I would list it for sale on Zillow in December & January to see what happens. No yard sign, no other advertisement. I listed it a few years ago with a real estate agent, it didn't sell, but the professional pics are still on Zillow. If you list with Zillow, you can control when you show it and who you show it to. No RE salesperson calling at the last minute. I do have a Google phone number. Does anybody have experience selling on Zillow?

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Gulf Breeze, FL

Right now FL real estate is hot, if you want to sell it, get it listed asap, interest rates are low and inventory is short.

This is the time of year people are down here looking for property.

If you get an offer from someone from NY or MI, be sure to check their voter registration card first

I have not sold a house with Zillow, but I have a fairly large customer base who have. It could be a unique situation to my area, but houses literally sell in a day. Sometimes I don’t even know a customer has moved, and the new tenants already occupy the house. Pretty much overnight.

No signs in the yard or anything. The old customers are already gone. The houses have been selling above market value, but again, it could be a unique situation to my area.

Not listed yet but Here it is

Never listed on Zillow, but looked at doing it for our home. I think the real estate agent percentage is a little lower? The home next door to us sold in 3 days for 900K with an agent. Please follow-up on the thread and if you do list on Zillow, give your experience. I am really interested.
Thank you--

Full disclosure, my wife is a realtor but no where near you so your safe from a pitch from me.
Real estate is very hot right now almost everywhere. Property sells in a day many times if it's priced correctly for the market. Sometimes multiple offers. The challenge for you is to not underprice and leave money on the table but not overprice either. You may want to pay for a professional appraisal. The Zillow and other site's estimates are often meaningless.
With multiple offers you need to evaluate much more than just the offer price. You really have nothing until you close so financing (cash is obviously best) and other contingencies (a variety of inspections) are key issues.
Do they need to sell their house to do this (everyone thinks their house will sell quickly with no issues)? Where are you going and the timing to make it work for both of you. Who the lender is, how hard are they to work with, are they prone to hiccups, etc.?
Photos are an important part but all that is just to get your phone to ring the first time. After that initial contact there are lots of minefields if you don't have some experience buying and selling homes. Things to say or not to say, things that must be on paper and in a legal fashion. Then there's the issue of dealing and filtering out the real buyers, tire kickers and even the occasional criminal. They all get to go through your house and it's important to know who they are.
Get as much info as you can on first contact and do a through internet search. Not perfect but can be much better than blind.
Also some of these online sites hit you with all sorts of extras. Contracts and other forms. Are you willing to pay a buyers agent their commission if they bring you a deal? If not you will be doing the job of both buyer and sellers agent.

I sold my last house on Zillow. The buyers were utilizing an agent so I had to deal with her, but it actually turned out ok.

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Originally posted by ridewv:
I sold my last house on Zillow. The buyers were utilizing an agent so I had to deal with her, but it actually turned out ok.

I guess you had to pay her. What percentage? If I don't sell it in two months I'll list with the agent who has the listing next door.

Nice place. Like 220-9er said I wouldn’t rely on the Zillow price alone. If you don’t want to use an agent do your own due diligence. Search for similar and go look at the competition.

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Right now FL real estate is hot, if you want to sell it, get it listed asap, interest rates are low and inventory is short.

^^^
Maybe Maybe not. Is everything from Sally cleaned up?? We are stil a big mess here a month after Zeta.

Nice home though.

I would consider getting it appraised up front. Minimal cost to you, then you know it's priced correctly. Good luck with the sale.

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Originally posted by cne32507:
Not listed yet but Here it is

Can't provide any helpful advice, but it's a nice looking home.

My fiancé is an agent so that's my disclaimer. You are better off getting an agent. There is a lot to getting top dollar and also getting a buyer that can actually close the deal. Will you accept an offer from someone that has FHA/VA loan? You may be screwed over silly things like peeling paint. If you overprice and have to lower it then you will make people think there is something wrong with it.

Anyhow I could go on with why a realtor is a good idea. In addition to that if you list it with professional photos paid for by a realtor you will likely get an order to remove the photos. They are not your property. Agent probably doesn't care that they are on Zillow if it's not listed, but if you use them to list the agent would have a legitimate gripe.

Oh and another point, if you use Zillow it doesn't go into MLS so only people on Zillow will see it. That could limit your buyer pool.

Oh and another point (also disclaimer things may be different in FL), an appraisal may not be the best bet. You have to pay for it and it's usually the value based on banks, not a market analysis. For instance if your appraisal says $500K you may get a market analysis that says it's worth $550K. Now maybe someone can't get a mortgage if it doesn't appraise, but if you get a cash buyer or someone that will pay the difference you are making money.

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Originally posted by cne32507:

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Originally posted by ridewv:
I sold my last house on Zillow. The buyers were utilizing an agent so I had to deal with her, but it actually turned out ok.

I guess you had to pay her. What percentage? If I don't sell it in two months I'll list with the agent who has the listing next door.

I believe I listed it for $340,000 in hopes of actually getting $320,000 - $330,000. I told the agent I had very little room to move or pay her a commission. Her buyers offered $330,000 with me paying her and furnishing a 1 year home buyers warranty. (which cost something like $700). I countered to her with "you just get me a check for $327,000 and I don't care how you come up with it" and she did. She made my counter offer $334,000 which broke down to $327,000 for me, $6,300 commission, and $700 insurance. This was in May with covid, and they seemed like the only really interested buyers so I was just happy to be done with it.

If you don't want to pay a buyer's agent's commission, just say so in the Zillow ad. "Buyer to pay all real estate agent commissions." And then make sure it is written in the Purchase Agreement/Contract.

It can be hit or miss. I've known folks that selling FSBO on Zillow worked wonderfully. Others not so much.

When the ex and I were selling our house earlier this year, we tried first on Zillow ourselves based on recent success by several neighbors with almost identical houses selling on Zillow, and got little traction. A few showings, but no offers. (This was also at the very start of the first quarantine, which obviously threw things off quite a bit.)

After trying ourselves for a little over a month and getting nowhere, we listed with a realtor, and it absolutely blew up and had multiple offers within very short order. Plus, the realtor helped maneuver through some tricky situations that came up during the pending sale period.

So the few percentage points we ended up paying for the realtor was money well spent, IMO.

I worked for Zillow for 6 months last year and I quit because the job wasn't for me.

I would run from Zillow like the Plague. Zillow is the most woke company I've ever worked for. They absolutely hate your guts. They had woke / diversity related posters in the bathroom stalls.

A few of us had a secret encrypted chat on one of the company servers where we could mock the wokesters, but if it had been open, we'd all have been fired.

Just my $.02.

^^ Not to go wildly OT, but is Trulia any better?

Beautiful looking place. I think you'll sell soon.

As others have said, a lot of areas are red hot markets for sellers now. We have remained friends with the realtor we used six years ago.

She called me a couple of weeks ago and said if we were interested in getting out of Illinois (I am, wife's still on the fence), she thought our house would be sold in less than a week.

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If I don't sell it in two months I'll list with the agent who has the listing next door.

750K next door.

Thanks for the great advice. Keep it coming, please.