Incentives offered by sellers at closing are nothing new to the real estate industry.
Sometimes it’s as simple as leaving that beautiful pool table behind, rather than moving it out of the basement. Or, it’s the seller agreeing to fix the front porch, or repaint the pink bedroom that the future buyer just can’t get past as they dream of a new in-home office.
Seller-funded incentives have also gone to extremes. It wasn’t too long ago that everything from a free car, boat, and luxury trips could be included in the mix.
Incentives are back and have become a bit more realistic. Perhaps they are back to their true purpose, which is as a valuable marketing tool that can draw attention to a listing while providing an added benefit to the buyer.
In October, Zillow introduced "Special Offers" to address this need and it’s already having a positive impact on agents who are taking advantage of this new marketing tool. More than 1,000 listings have a seller-funded cash incentive attached, which provides added visibility on Zillow, among other benefits.
The early results for those agents that are participating in the program are promising. Listings with a Zillow Special Offer are currently receiving 10 times more buyer contacts than listings without.
Tyler Rygmyr, with Revolution Real Estate in Nashville, is already a fan of the program. “I learned about the Zillow Special Offer program late one evening, so I ran a special later that night on a listing that had been on the market for 9 months. Several scheduled showings happened immediately thereafter, and an acceptable offer was submitted within days. Pretty cool!”
Let me know if you have any questions or if you need more information about seller-funded incentives, I'd be happy to show you some great examples of how other agents are using these "special offers" in their areas.
how did I miss this???? I'm going to go through all my zillow emails... they did tell the premier agents about this... right?
Hey Tammy - you received an email when it launched, if you need any help setting these up, give me a ring, I can walk you through it over the phone. It's really easy.
yes, Brad, I agree with Tammy,
I didn't hear about that feature... Definitely will check it out.
Thanks for sharing.
That is interesting. I just went to zillow to investigate but apparently trouble with the site, error message telling me to come back later. Does it cost me any $$$ to mark one of my listings with an incetive?
Tatyana - I was certain that an email went out, I'll double check to be sure.
Glad I posted this, and I'm more glad you both saw it. :-)
Brad - This is great - hadn't heard ANYTHING about it before now but I'm off to check it out!
Brad - I also never heard about it. Will check it out. LOVE your new Avatar!
Thanks for sharing this Brad. I just came across it... I have to look into it for one of my listing.
Brad - I saw an email but wasn't sure what this was about. It sounds interesting and very much worth a look.
Missed you at NAR. Came by Sunday.
We just had a builder representative come by today and they are now offering a 5% commission on year end closings. That's in addition to the buyer incentives for closing costs and upgrades. I'm holding out for the new car.
Thanks Brad I will be taking a look and passing along to my sellers.
Brad, just added 'special offers' for my listing on Zillow - and will see how it translates into getting a buyer...
Zillow is innovative - and being a premier agent on Zillow has helped me a lot.
Hey Scott - Not sure why you received an error, maybe the seller incentives news has overloaded the site with traffic? :-)) Special offers is for all Premier Agents and is no additional cost. The seller covers the incentive offers. I just tried the site and it's working fine. Let me know if you need help.
Bill & Cyndi - Seller Incentives are definitely buyer motivators and every little bit helps in today's market and economy.
Hi Dagny - I'm happy and excited that this post is helping to get the word out, it's important that people know these tools are in place and available. BTW - The avatar was taken in Maui, thanks. :-)
Donna - it's a great tool for sellers that can be used in a variety of ways to inspire and motivate potential buyers. I love to hear success stories, so be sure to share yours with us too.
Christine - sorry we missed each other at NAR, I was hoping to see you there. Did you get to meet Mauricio at the booth?
Doug - so what your saying is that this new feature now allows you and your sellers to compete with the Big Dogs?!?
David - that's great! The sellers and buyers in your area will appreciate it I'm sure.
Interesting. Brad this is definitely the first time I have heard of this. Will have to check it out. Thanks for sharing Brad.
Praful - AWESOME! Be sure to let me know how that goes, you know how much I love hearing and sharing that stuff.
Also want to thank you for always participating and contributing at ZAcademy, we're actually doing a class today which will include seller incentives and show how it helps sellers get additional exposure to the buying community.
*QUICK TIP & REMINDER:
Don't forget to add your image/photo on your seller incentive special offers, there's a spot on the right hand side. If you don't add one, it's ok, but it will show up blank like the last two in the screen shot below.
I love this feature. It's great for our Premier Agents, and it's great for the tens of millions of homeshoppers who use Zillow.com and Zillow's mobile apps.
Lanre - looking forward to your feedback and hopefully an increase in your buyer contacts.
Spencer - I'd be lying if I said I was less than thrilled that you approve and like this feature!! <smile> lol~
Have to be careful with incentives it you want the properties to appraise. After all, it is the sales prices, less the incentives to be the true value.
Joy - make sure you contact me, I'd love to share how you can get better results with your account on Zillow.
Yvette - that makes sense, good point. I guess in some cases when the property is on the market for a long time and isn't getting any attention or offers from buyers at all, this would be a great alternative to a price reduction.
I don't understatnd how this is better than a price reduction. Am I missing something?
Hi Gail - I'll try an analogy here:
Let's say you go to the store to buy your Thanksgiving Turkey and all the turkey's say 199.00. Then front and center on a table you see a "Farmers" turkey that says 199.00 but it includes dressing, potatoes, cranberry's, and gravy. The Farmer could have just "reduced" the price to 179, but instead, he wanted to motivate the buyer by adding the additional item(s) of value.
For the seller, it may be the same as lowering the price since they are paying either way, but for the potential buyer, it's a deal and on Zillow, the property now shows at the top as a featured or showcased property again. This may not be the best analogy, but at this time of year, it's the best I could do. I'm going out tonight to find our turkey and I'll be looking for the one with seller incentivres. Hope this helps.
Happy ThanksGiving~ :-)
Wishing you and your entire family a wonderful Thanksgiving Day surrounded by family and friends!
We all offer or expect some seller concessions, we should market that information. A lot of buyers want to ask and they are concerned about that sometimes.
Barbara Jo - thanks, and right back at ya! :-)
Ken - good point, and now we're making it even easier for you on Zillow. Happy Holidays ~
Seems like no one saw the email, including me, but we all saw your blog. I guess this is one more indication that blogging is essential for all business, even those that live on line. Thanks Brad
Hey Larry - I actually think that with the volume of email we all get these days, many probably just missed the announcement that was emailed out. I too am glad that Blogging has the value and power of getting our messages out to the rest of the online world. Now days, seems like we need to add video, podcasting, tweeting and texting etc. to the mix as well. lol~ Happy Holidays! :-)
Brad-Looks like a good plan for getting more eyes on the listing. The more eyes you get, the better your chance for getting a buyer, right?
Yes Wayne - EXACTLY! Very well put, I couldn't have said it better myself! :-)
Brad - this is the first I hear of it (I too must have missed the email that went out) but glad I didn't miss this blog. Suggested and hope it gets up there so that others like me don't miss it this time around. Have! a super holiday
Add me to the list of agents that didn't know about this. But I think it is an excellent idea and I am going to spend some time looking into it further.
I, too, missed this. Had a delightful call from Kerrie at Zillow who set up the banner on my AR blogs. I really like this feature!.
Margaret
Hi Brad...Great Idea. Nice to see Buyers are getting on board. It's better than keep dropping the price.
Thanks to You and Zillow...Hope you plan to Come here soon :O))
Have your best year ever in 2012
Zillow keeps raising the bar for added value to everyone's listings. Great article to hear about the news at Ziloow!
Brad
Thanks for posting. Will definitely explore that in January. Expecting a new listing and will want to wow the customer with new marketing ideas. Will keep a close look at the stats.
thanks!
Sounds like a new way to put some spunk in your showings!
Brad, thanks for mentioning this. I, too, must have missed the email announcing this to Zillow Premier agents. By the way, I've had two Zillow leads this week.
Wonderful wonderful post Brad.
I did send the article to my sellers for reference as the 3rd source.
Great share and Happy Holidays Brad
Sounds like something I need to look into. On to Zillow!!
Hi Brad,
Thanks for sharing.
This sounds like a nice incentive for buyers, plus it brings in offers faster for sellers.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Hi Brad,
An interesting post.
Zillow continues to come up with interesting and creative ways to make things interesting.
Thanks for sharing
PHil
Lora - thanks for the comment and the suggestion. Happy Holidays to you and your family too.
Brad - trusting you and yours will ....
Have A Very Merry Christmas
and
A Prosperous New Year
Kathy - we did, thank you. Hope your Holidays are just as good... or even better! :-)
I never heard about this and I advertise with Zillow! Sad that my rep never mentioned this to me but they keep trying to sell me zip codes.
Hi LaNita - this is something new that we've recently added. It may be that your sales rep at the time didn't have this available? There were numerous emails that went out to ALL Premier Agents when we did launch this, unfortunately I think many of those were missed or deleted without being read. (I do that sometime too)
We also did 3 separate webinar trainings to show how this works and how to set it up for your sellers.
I'll make sure I pass along your comment to the sales team so they can be sure to mention this as an added-value to those they are helping with their advertising like yourself.
Thanks, and if you ever need any assistance or have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime. :-)