Zillow COO: ‘Preview’ idea first conceived 2 years ago 

A few weeks after Zillow introduced Preview, Chief Operating Officer Jun Choo is making the rounds on industry podcasts to emphasize that the new pre-marketing product doesn't signal a change to the home search giant's pro-consumer values.

"We are shifting a little bit in saying that, maybe sellers do need more choices and more options on how they want to market their home — which is fair," Choo said during a recent Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered episode. What Zillow doesn't want is a product "that does that at the expense of a buyer's experience."

Instead, "we built our own version" that helps buyers, sellers and listing agents, Choo explained. "We're not backtracking on any of our philosophy."

Zillow Preview's beginnings: The company had been considering an offering like Preview long before the industry debate about pre-marketing and private listings ratcheted up in recent months, Choo said.

"The product team had actually been thinking about this from the time we launched Zillow Showcase two years ago," he explained. Zillow "listened to the marketplace" and realized it "needed a version" of a pre-marketing product — one that will work with MLSs and "within whatever rules are out there in the market."

"One thing we can do at Zillow with any listing product is make sure it gets the broadest exposure possible, which is really what sellers care about," he added.

Preview isn't a 'bait-and-switch': In February, Compass announced a partnership with Rocket to display the brokerage's "Coming Soon" and "Private Exclusive" listings on Redfin. So how is Preview different?

"From the consumer angle, we're not hiding anything behind a [registration] wall. We're not using this as a bait-and-switch to try and get people to work with our agents, because we're working with partner agents anyway," Choo said.

Another notable difference is "Preview listings actually have two ways that a consumer can contact the agent," he added. "They can contact the listing agent, in which case the lead will go to the listing agent. But if they want to schedule a tour of the home, that goes into our Preferred program and goes to one of our Preferred partners."

Aside from Preview listings appearing on Zillow before they are active on the MLS, "there are almost no similarities to the other 'Coming Soon' products."

What Zillow doesn't want to become: The industry may be starting to fragment, but Zillow is determined "to try to find some way for consumers to have a place to go where they can see all of those things" available to them, Choo said.

But Zillow is, first and foremost, a tech company, he emphasized. "We don't want to be a compliance-enforcing body — it's not what we're built for, and we don't enjoy doing it," Choo said. "Hopefully we're able to maintain a set of rules and standards here that work for everybody."

Ultimately, Zillow's goal is "to make sure that the consumers have choice," he added. "We're going to continue to create more options for sellers to market their homes on Zillow, and we're going to find every avenue to make sure that all the available inventory is there for buyers to see."

The 'frustrating' side of innovation: Choo's approach for product development is "to build a prototype quickly and get it in market quickly" because "you could sit there and do focus groups and research and try to get it perfect — and it won't be, no matter how long you take."

For Choo, the "frustrating part" is building around constraints. Instead, he prefers to "imagine that there are no rules or regulations" — "just build the thing, and then we'll figure out how to make it fit the rules." It's the approach his team took when developing what became Zillow Showcase.

"As long as we can continue to build and innovate, we're happy to comply with a complex set of rules. But we can't start building with those rules in mind," he said.

How AI is improving home search: Choo also made an appearance on Mike DelPrete's Context podcast, where he referenced Zillow's new AI mode as an example of how AI can make the home search process a bit easier.

Zillow "kind of knew what homes you looked at" based on saved searches and likes, but "we didn't know what you were thinking," Choo said.

With conversational AI tools, Zillow can "understand what your situation is in a way that, when you come back, you're not starting from scratch."