Given the pandemic, why has Zillow not jumped on this opportunity?13356
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 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
 Screen Grab of Zillow  Screen Grab from Zillow Search Given the pandemic, why has Zillow not jumped on this opportunity? Hi All, Less than 3 percent of 3,606 listings in Atlanta today (19 October 2020) have a Zillow 3D Home virtual tour. That's just 98! And, of the 98, 12 of these listings are Owned by Zillow listings. While it is nice that potential home buyers can limit a search to Must Have 3D Home, I find it amazing - in these pandemic times - that nearly 100 percent of these listings do not have a Zillow 3D Home tour. I wonder if Zillow opened its platform to Matterport, Asteroom, iGuide and other 3D/360 virtual tour platforms, how much higher would be the percent of listings that would have a 3D/360 Virtual Tour? And, once Zillow gets to a critical mass of 3D/360 virtual tours, it would have a great value-add benefit to offer potential home sellers and potential home buyers. Given the pandemic, why has Zillow not jumped on this opportunity? To state it differently, if Zillow has failed with its free Zillow 3D Home virtual tour service to generate a meaningful percentage of listings with a virtual tour, why not open its platform to other 3D/360 virtual tour platforms to achieve this result? Best, Dan |
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3DVirtuallyThere private msg quote post Address this user | |
| , it's a manual process and agents won't take the time | ||
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 WGAN FanCLUB Member Coeur d'Alene, Idaho |
lilnitsch private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I am bundling Zillow tours with every improved property I shoot | ||
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Orange, California |
craigsauer private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Agents need have nothing to do with it. Photographers can publish directly to Zillow. | ||
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 WGAN Fan Club Member Gilroy, California |
Dataventurer private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I just received qualification as a Zillow Certified Photographer a couple weeks ago. It's easy. Submit five tours created with their app, they review them for quality and then you are certified. In the process I did a deep-dive into how media that was posted in my local MLS (Santa Clara county/ Bay Area) was being propagated to the major platforms. I found that Zillow pulls the photos reliably, but not other media. There are eight different fields on the MLS listing app for media that the agents fill out when posting a new property. The only way that a Matterport tour shows up is if the URL link is inserted into the "3D Tour-Branded" field. I saw entries where other tours or single-page websites were inserted in that field and nothing shows up on the Zillow listing page. Apparently, it looks for Matterport domain (I have not tried to fool the system by using Matterport somehow in a custom URL..) Zillow definitely favors featuring their own 3D tours shot with their app. If you link to a Matterport tour, there is a "View Virtual Tour" icon in the upper left corner of the top photo and there is a small text label displayed near the top of the listing page to indicate its availability. See first screen cap below with circled locations. The Zillow 3D tour gets featured under the main picture with a 3D Home icon and full-width spread. See second screen cap. And on search map, there is an enlarged red 3D Home icon. I did a local search last week, found ONE 3D Home tour in city of 40,000 (mine!) and 3 Zillow 3D Home tours in a neighboring town of about 50,000. As for your question, Dan, why Zillow isn't opening up things to other platforms, I think they are of the mindset that they can incentivize realtors to shoot the tours themselves with their app. They make it pretty easy. But there are a lot of realtors who are set in their ways and focused on other things they think will improve their sales. I don't think many (any?) realtors are likely to do the research I did to trace the way the various 8 fields in the MLS listing show up in other major platforms. In many cases I saw, agents are paying for media and web pages that aren't being scraped over to the top platforms. In the meantime, I see a huge opportunity to use the Zillow platform tools to create the 3D Home tour and also submit Video Walkthroughs so that the properties and agents I am helping get some pretty valuable featuring on the map and in their listings. My two cents as an agent and a non-pro photographer/videographer.   |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by @Dataventurer Thank you for the deep-dive on the Zillow fields and additional backstory. Even Zillow executives - in this WGAN-TV Live at 5 - said 50 percent of real estate agents would want a Pro to shoot Zillow 3D home. ✓ Transcript: WGAN-TV How to Make Money with Zillow 3D Home "...about half the agents were willing to do it themselves," says Zillow Senior Director Product Development 3D and Computer Vision Josh Weisberg. Seems like the easiest way for Zillow to get to critical mass is to leverage existing 3D/360 virtual tours that are already being created by real estate photographers? Dan |
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WGAN Fan CLUB Member Coeur d'Alene, Idaho |
lilnitsch private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Dataventurer This virtual tour link will vary from market to market ~ The Zillow 3D tour shows up front & center and also rides along with the Truila listing as Zillow owns Truila. Listings with the Zillow 3D tour also appear on the map search with a custom 3D icon and Zillow gives listings with a Zillow 3D Home Tours a 7 day listing ‘boost’ in search results |
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 WGAN StandardMember Las Vegas |
VTLV private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Politics 101. Realtor.com is a real estate listings website operated by the News Corp subsidiary Move, Inc. In 2016, one of Matterport's new investors included News Corp. When you (Zillow) de-throned the #1 search site for real estate listings (realtor.com). Why on earth would you give any power back to your competition? |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @VTLV Point taken. I wonder how Matterport might overcome this challenge of News Corp. (Realtor.com) as an investor? It was a good strategy in the short time. As you point out, a big challenge in the long run. Dan |
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WGAN Fan CLUB Member Coeur d'Alene, Idaho |
lilnitsch private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @DanSmigrod Matterport is about to head off to middle school and still is a startup looking for dollars. While I am vested in Matterport gear and genuinely like their tours they need to get their stuff together or they will be a what ever happened to. Someone will buy their technology only to part it out. |
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