On Monday, Zillow rolled out its newest technology: ShowingTime+.
Zillow acquired ShowingTime in February 2021 for $500 million in an effort to streamline home tours for agents and clients. With ShowingTime+, Zillow is focusing even more of its efforts on agents in the industry.
ShowingTime+
According to a 2021 T3 Sixty report, the average agent uses more than 12 unique software products throughout a transaction. This can be both time-consuming and costly for agents.
The new expanded software of ShowingTime+ eliminates some of that by combining products and services from ShowingTime, dotloop, Bridge Interactive, and 3D Home tours and interactive floor plans.
Ultimately, our goal is to reduce transaction friction for everyone by offering an integrated, open platform for real estate professionals to run their business. Nearly 90% of home shoppers and sellers work with an agent, and at ShowingTime+, we want to help agents bring them home.
ShowingTime, dotloop, and Bridge Interactive will continue to offer the same level of support and service they have always done independently.
Zillow Focuses on Agents
It’s no secret that Zillow is working to create a Zillow Super App for real estate agents. Along with talk of a Super App, Zillow CEO Rich Barton has also demonstrated a shifting attitude toward agents this year.
The focus of Zillow has always been the consumer, but agents have become a more significant part of the company’s conversation. This year is the first time people have publicly heard Barton express agents being valued company partners.
While ShowingTime+ isn’t the Super App, it is a step in that direction. It will allow Zillow to begin the process of streamlining software while working to help agents throughout the transaction process.
In a Q&A with Inman, ShowingTime+ senior vice president Jun Choo echoed the importance of focusing on agents.
Zillow Group tends to think about homebuyers and homesellers as being the primary person they solve problems for. It made sense for Zillow Group to have a division within Zillow that focuses on agents and the industry, so we took all of the pieces that we already had, brought them together, and then put them under one brand to signify this is a thing that’s going to be a focus for us.
Will agents be on board with Zillow’s shifting focus?
For years, Zillow received pushback from agents, even though most have adopted to industry disruptors. How will agents react to this new focus from Zillow in the coming year?
Choo acknowledged the challenges of shifting the focus and, in turn, the perceptions of a brand.
Zillow for years has been here for home buyers and sellers — it’s hard to then say, ‘Oh, Zillow really wants to focus on offering management software’…But we also want to show there’s a group of people whose primary focus is the agent — not the buyer and seller.
As Zillow works to build its Super App, we can expect that there will be more acquisitions and more rollouts of services for agents. The question is— will these new services finally change the outlook of industry professionals?
