by Laurie Schenden
CVAR Director of Communications & Marketing
Evil schemer or technological innovator? Either way, some say industry leadership should get credit for much of Zillow’s dominance, if not its success.
Many real estate professionals have tried to look at the positives over the course of the company’s growth, such as how Zillow moved real estate to the internet and showed everyone what was possible by taking transactions online.
Others predicted bad things would happen but saw that the future was in technology, so held their noses and did business with the company anyway.
Some are wondering if they were duped from the start.
Zillow at REvive in 2015
Inman News, a respected new source in the real estate industry, reported this about Zillow’s syndication deal with CRMLS in 2015:
“Zillow Group’s listing syndication deal … stipulates that Zillow will not compete with the MLS as either a brokerage or a listing service. That means Zillow Group can’t charge agents a referral fee for leads they get from its popular real estate search portals, including Zillow.com and Trulia.com.”
“Zillow Group’s vice president of industry development, Curt Beardsley, revealed details about the newly signed agreement with [CRMLS] at Real Estate REvive, an event hosted by Glendora, California-based Citrus Valley Association of REALTORS®.”
That’s right. A Zillow executive spoke at the Real Estate REvive Conference in 2015 and told real estate professionals, including hundreds of CVAR members, that Zillow does not want to be in the brokerage or MLS business.
“But,” Inman reported after the event, “CEO Spencer Rascoff’s observation that agents might be willing to pay up to 40 percent of their commission for well-qualified leads, and the previous year’s launch of “coming soon” listings, raised suspicions from some quarters that Zillow was eager to quell.”

Curt Beardsley