How to Contact a Listing Agent Directly on Zillow - YouTube

in this video we will show you how to contact a  listing agent directly on zillow.com now you've  

probably stumbled upon this video because you've  recently figured out that there's something fishy  

going on with zillow and the fact that it's quite  frankly very hard to contact the listing agent  

if you use the contact agent button on a typical  listing on zillow the person who actually responds  

is not the listing agent so in this video again  we will show you how to figure out who the listing  

agent is for a property you see on zillow and  furthermore how to actually contact the listing  

agent now the first thing we'll direct your  attention to is in the search results which are on  

the right hand side below each listing it actually  says the name of the listing agent brokerage  

so for any avoidance of doubt the first thing you  can do is basically write down the name of this  

brokerage and uh if and when you use zillow  to contact somebody regarding this listing  

if the person who responds is not a member  of that brokerage then you know for sure  

that zillow has connected you with some  other agent who is not the listing agent  

so let's go ahead and click on this listing the  first thing to mention as i'm sure you're already  

aware is that using the contact agent button will  not connect you directly with the listing agent  

if you use the contact agent button you will  be connected with a buyer's agent who is  

participating in the zillow premier agent program  now the zillow premiere agent program instantly  

connects agents with buyers and basically allows  these buyer's agents to market their services to  

prospective home purchasers this is a major  source of revenue generation for zillow zillow is  

a publicly traded company which has a market cap  as of today of over 12 billion dollars so there's  

certainly not a charity and what we're showing  you today is essentially the very heart and soul  

of zillow and how it actually makes money it makes  money by selling ads selling of ads on a practical  

level means that this contact box is for sale some  agent is paying to be on the receiving end of this  

contact agent box and zillow makes tremendous  amount of money from the premier agent program  

we've pulled up here zillow's annual  report and we've taken a look into the  

income statement where it breaks down the revenue  by source and as we can see here the premier agent  

subcomponent or segment of imt which is one of  their divisions in 2020 generated 1 million 46 954  

which is in thousands translation zillow  generated 1.046 billion dollars from essentially  

disintermediating listing agents and prospective  buyers by way of the premier agent program  

so now we've established quite clearly why this  confusion is happening and therefore we can  

move on to the next part of this process which  is how to actually contact the listing agent  

so we've established that this box does not  work it will not contact the listing agent  

now let's try the take a tour button now i guess  this seems somewhat promising it is taking us to  

a next steps a call to action so to speak so maybe  this is going to contact the listing agent wrong  

it will not and in fact in this case they're much  more transparent than in that other button where  

they didn't tell us that the person they're going  to connect us with is a buyer's agent here it very  

clearly says they will connect you with a buyer's  agent who is obviously not the listing agent  

so we're over two so let's scroll down further on  the listing and see if we can find any other clues  

listing agents are generally prohibited from  putting their contact information in the  

description i wonder why so we're not going to be  able to actually figure out the contact details  

through this part of the listing so if we scroll  down further we're actually going to make a bit  

of progress here now we see the following listed  by john salt keller williams eagle realty so this  

area is the primary way of figuring out who the  actual listing agent is for a property on zillow  

what do you do here well at this point you  actually need to literally google this person  

until you find a way to contact them be it their  phone number email or if there's a contact box  

on this person's website so let's figure out how  to contact the listing agent who in this case  

is john salt at keller williams eagle realty  we've copied the information we'll open a new tab  

and we'll go ahead and paste that  into the browser or the search bar  

and we have a couple results here we  have on the right a google my business  

posting here we can see the phone number so you  can try contacting them using that phone number  

there is also a result here you can try the  first one and uh this it does not appear to  

be his actual official website but it's uh  going to provide some links so here we have  

john's salt website let's click that  and let's see what happens it doesn't  

appear to be a very quick website  so maybe we can try this one instead  

this one let's take a look accept  cookies don't see contact information yet  

still don't see contact information so this looks  like it's the home page of this brokerage's local  

site so we haven't found john's information let's  go back to the first link which appears to be  

quite unreliable but in any case still don't  really see his contact information so let's go  

back to google scroll back here we go this looks  like the direct result from his company's website

doesn't appear to be working it's a bit slow  here we go and finally we found the email of  

the listing agent so my goodness that was a real  pain quite an expedition and quite frankly it's  

ridiculous that there's no way for us to directly  contact the listing agent but we're not sure of  

that yet because we haven't gone down to the  full bottom of the listing page here on zillow  

so let's keep trying to see if there's any other  way to contact the listing agent in one click  

so the next thing to look at is source this will  always tell you where the listing is coming from  

in this case it's coming from the miami  association of realtors and there's almost always  

an mls number now one way to potentially contact  the listing agent is to search for this mls number  

on google many of these realtor groups also  have a direct consumer facing website which  

has contact listing agent box available  for you to use so in other words you could  

literally google this mls number if you see any  website result from miami association of realtors  

it might be a website that you can use to find  the listing contact the listing agent directly  

if we scroll down a little bit further we see  another box which is inviting us to take a tour  

this is not the listing agent because we see here  that it clearly says buyer's agent so at least in  

this case solo has been very transparent if we use  this box expect to be contacted by a buyer's agent  

so if we scroll down further we see that  there's a contact agent box but again much  

as was the case with the contact agent button  zillow does not specify who we're contacting  

it doesn't say listing agent nor does it say  buyer's agent as a result we are really not  

sure what's going on here but from testing we  can tell you that as of today this box will not  

connect you with the listing agent instead it  will connect you with a zillow premier agent  

so let's go all the way to the bottom and what  we're seeing here is that there's really no other  

call to action there's no other option to contact  the listing agent so in conclusion on zillow  

on pretty much every listing on their platform any  listing by a traditional agent on zillow there is  

literally no way as of today for a consumer to  directly contact the listing agent in one click  

any any sort of call to action box prompt on a  listing on zillow will route that person to a  

zillow premier agent somebody who has paid money  to advertise on zoa so we hope you found this  

video helpful if you have any questions please  leave us a note in the comments below the video  

i'm nick at house it and if you are looking to  buy sell or rent here in new york city long island  

hudson valley or south florida we'd be happy  to help and save you quite a bit of money check  

out our website hauseit.com and give us a shout  via [email protected] or call us at (888) 494-8258

we'll also put our contact  details in the description below  

thanks for watching and we'll  see you on the next video