Prospective home buyers and sellers spend hours on real estate portal websites trying to understand features, value, and pricing when it comes to buying or selling a home.
We’ve compared two of the most popular premium subscription services real estate agents use to reach buyers and sellers on these portals – Realtor Pro and Zillow Premier. Below, we compare them head to head to see which has the best features, usefulness and value.
Realtor Pro vs. Zillow Premier
There are a lot of real estate services, tools and products that can help agents advertise their brand and generate leads. But none are as popular as Realtor Pro and Zillow Premier.
There’s a 99% chance that your clients will visit Realtor.com and/or Zillow at some point in their home buying or selling journey, and that makes both portals a good option for marketing. But which one should you choose?
Here is our comparison to help you make your pick.
Features Comparison
For a fair, apples-to-apples comparison of these two competing real estate services products, here’s how Realtor Pro and Zillow Premier compare across 4 key factors:
1. Visibility
Realtor.com is one of the top real estate websites in the US. With around 53 million unique visits per quarter, Realtor Pro is a good choice for growing your online presence.
Zillow is the most visited real estate portal in the world. Zillow reports 137 million monthly unique users.
2. Partnerships
Realtor.com is the flagship consumer and professional web portal for the Move, Inc. brand. Besides, Realtor.com, its sites and services include:
It’s a deep reach into the consumer market and a lot of professional expertise. (Note: Realtor.com is not directly affiliated with the National Association of REALTORS.)
The Zillow Group brand owns:
That’s also a lot of reach and exposure. Zillow Premier automatically lets you market to users on both Zillow and Trulia.
3. Tech Tools
Realtor Pro has a suite of marketing tools to help agents build their online real estate brand, including:
● Local Expert for custom display ads on Realtor.com search pages, Facebook and Instagram.
● Advantage Brand for listing performance reports to get seen by more local buyers and sellers.
● ListHub Presentation Tools for exposure across 750+ real estate websites and lead nurturing with seller client listing reports.
● Essentials Toolkit for building your brand and business profiles online with a free Realtor Pro account.
Zillow Premier gives agents access to a suite of real estate services tech tools, including:
● Agent Advertising for lead pipelines featuring live lead transfers.
● My Agent for exclusive buyer’s agent messaging and insights.
● Agent Account for showcasing your agent profile, current listings, past sales, managing your lead pipeline, and leveraging your team’s expertise.
● Agent CRM for exclusive client insights, tracking your performance and ROI, and managing reminders and notifications.
● Agent Direct for premium exposure on Zillow and Facebook.
4. Leads
The Realtor Pro tool Market Reach lets you create automated ads for Facebook and Instagram home shoppers, then use Connections Plus to respond to buyer leads and engage potential clients.
Leads are not exclusive, but neither are all zip codes, meaning there is opportunity even if you’re new. For seasoned agents with bigger budgets, buying an exclusive zip code is a must.
Lead generation is the main reason to try Zillow Premier and with Zillow’s reach there’s abundant opportunity with Agent Advertising for buyer leads using Zillow’s live transfer feature.
Like Realtor Pro, Zillow Premier leads aren’t exclusive, but can be shared among a limited handful of agents for the same zip code, so your lead volume, speed and responsiveness really count with Zillow.
Usefulness Comparison
Realtor Pro’s best use is for agents who want to focus on display ads for buyer leads. If you excel at Facebook and Instagram advertising or referral leads from social media, this is where you want to be.
Realtor.com has good traffic volume, name brand recognition, and good exposure for listing agents. It has exclusive agent zip codes if you have the budget for it, and clients and prospects will be impressed with listing and performance reports.
Zillow Premier’s best use is for agents who want to focus on native advertising on Zillow and Trulia for buyer leads. If you want to find qualified leads in the form of buyers/sellers looking for an agent, this is where you want to be.
Zillow features the highest traffic volume in the business for the most potential leads, which is great – but you do have to be quick in your responses or you will lose the lead to another agent.
If you have a number of listings on Zillow, you can claim exclusive ad space as a listing agent. With Zillow, you can also leverage your profile, track record and team expertise to effectively turn more leads into clients.
Value Comparison
Realtor Pro and Zillow Premier both have a few freebies for building an online presence. Paid lead generation for each starts at around $200 per month, but this budget will likely need to be increased to be effective.
Like most real estate lead generation services, conversion rates of around 3–5% mean you’ll need enough lead volume to get a good ROI. Agents with low lead volume tend to complain about lead quality for both Realtor and Zillow.
Agents with the best ROI may spend $1,000–$2,000 per month or more. And some high volume brokerages spend tens of thousands per month to see a good profit.
Realtor Pro requires a 12-month contract, while Zillow Premier only requires a 6-month contract to start. (Pro Tip: Pick your zip code carefully because it’s difficult to switch or cancel your contract early.) And similarly to most marketing efforts, better success comes to those making a long-term marketing investment with a well thought out strategy.
Zillow Premier vs. Realtor.com Pro – Bottom Line
As to whether Realtor Pro or Zillow Premier is best for you, that’s something each agent will need to decide based on objectives and goals. If you’re unsure about how long you may want to continue this marketing effort and expense, Zillow Premier’s shorter contract term (6 months) is probably the major deciding factor.
With both Realtor.com and Zillow, newer agents have a great starting point to build their business and veteran agents can benefit from fresh leads for their established brand.
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