2024-12 UPDATE: Zillow finally woke up and came to the realization that their “protection fee” wasn’t doing them any favors, rental listings are free again. Rest assured, we’re still tracking all incoming rental inquiries. While there’s not enough data yet, we’ll find out soon enough if they’re still sending garbage leads or if the lead quality has increased like they keep promising.
So, you decided to visit Zillow (or Trulia, or Hotpads) to take a look at the listing we published for your property and couldn’t find it? Don’t be alarmed, there’s a reason why it’s not there.
The Zillow Group has started charging companies to display their listings on the Zillow network (the same listings our MLS is providing them free of charge). Single-family property management is a very low-margin business and our companies can’t afford the prices they’re demanding. One company went on record that a recent bill from Zillow Group cost them over $1,900 for just one month. Ultimately, we would all have to pass these additional marketing expenses off to our clients. We did the responsible thing and ran the numbers before blindly paying what many have compared to a protection fee from the mob.
Since the start of 2018, the Zillow Network (Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads) generated just over 11,000 inquiries about our rental listings. Impressive number, right? But, the truly staggering number is how many tenants those 11,000 leads became: 10. The quality of the leads coming in from them is generally horrible. The bottom line is that while they think they’re the 800 pound gorilla, they’re actually not relevant for us.
What’s the solution? Focus efforts into the real estate portals that generate the quality leads. We have the data to enable us to do just this and we monitor it closely.
The short answer to your next question, “where do the quality inquiries come from?” Two sites have produced over 70% of the leads that turned into Pyramis tenants over the last three years. Those two sites: realtor.com and pyramiscompany.com. We will continue to leverage these sites and monitor their performance going forward.
This is just another reason why Pyramis continues to be a property management leader in San Antonio.