ZILLOW'S HUGE mistake 8/10/18.... The new program rolled out this month in Florida. Our spending budget of about $1500-$2000 @ month has brought in about 18-25+ leads. Now the same spend equates to an "estimated" 5.1 direct contacts (lead on the phone). This means substantially less leads to put into our CRM and much less leads to share with Agents on our team. Even though quality of leads before this change were somewhat hit or miss, it worked well enough for me to spend $$$ for years with Zillow, as we found that in addition to the ones who are ready to buy, our system of cultivating the leads over time turned many into buyers... I used the purchasing tool and found that increasing a monthly spend to $2000 a month will bring in about 6.7 "estimated contacts. This equates to an average cost per lead/contact to be $298.00 PER CONTACT. I would rather have an higher number of leads that we can cultivate opposed to a few at roughly $300 each. It doesn't make sense financially to continue to use this venue. We will continue for a month to see the results but, I am suspect. Our National Brokerage has this same type of "screener turn-over program"; The results have been minimal, that's why I invested in ZILLOW and TRULIA many years ago. There have been some cringe worthy changes with ZILLOW over the years but, this one will most likely be the nail in the coffin with regard to us continuing with them. And just to add to the math, if I were to up my spend to $5000 a month, their estimator anticipates me to receive only 14 leads.
