Zillow soft launches ‘offer strategies’ feature on listings
The tool shows home shoppers four different offer scenarios — and the odds of each being accepted — along with the option to connect with a partner agent.
Home search leader Zillow has been quietly rolling out a new feature on select listings in recent months.
Earlier in the year, according to social media posts that first highlighted the feature, the company added an "Explore offer strategies" function to individual listings, utilizing its data and AI to show home shoppers the relative strength of different offer amounts for a given property.
What does it do? The feature provides users with local insights, including how long the home has been on the market versus how soon homes go pending in that neighborhood, and whether it's a buyers or sellers market. Based on that data, Zillow provides a recommended "offer strategy."
Prospective buyers can select a "strong," "competitive," "moderate" or "weak" offer to see a price range for each and estimated likelihood of an offer in that range being accepted.
Are agents still involved? After exploring the various options, users can click a button on the site, located immediately below the offer data, to discuss the property — and offer strategies — with an agent.
The new feature does not send an offer directly to the seller or listing agent, a Zillow employee with knowledge of the effort clarified to Real Estate News, but is instead designed to connect home shoppers with a Zillow partner agent.
Is this a new type of Zestimate? The feature does not replace Zillow's Zestimate, but it incorporates that data — along with other market data Zillow has scraped — to determine the offer price ranges.
It's unclear how many listings include the feature or how Zillow has determined which properties to test it on. The tool is expected to be expanded nationwide later this year, Real Estate News learned, though it may undergo changes or updates before Zillow formally announces a national rollout.