Zillow Pro expands, pulling back the curtain on consumer search 

Zillow is going nationwide with its "Pro" offering, a product designed to give real estate agents additional clues about consumers' readiness to buy or sell a home.

Zillow Pro, first unveiled by the company last fall, is a membership program that brings together multiple agent tools, starting with My Agent, which enables agents to invite buyers and sellers in their network to connect with them. When a buyer or seller accepts that invitation, the agent gets a peek into their Zillow activity — including their browsing, saving and search data — along with outreach suggestions from Follow Up Boss. 

Listing agents will also gain access to "Likely to List," an AI-powered tool that helps agents spot properties in their Follow Up Boss database that may be coming to market soon.

According to Zillow, consumers who connect through the My Agent tool "convert at more than four times the rate of those with inferred relationships." One benefit for consumers? They can see their agent across local Zillow listings and easily message them without leaving their home search.

Who gets an invite? Agents can invite any buyer or seller in their network — including past clients, referrals and sphere contacts, a Zillow spokesperson told Real Estate News. The casual Zillow user who doesn't have this kind of pre-existing relationship will not receive unsolicited invitations from random agents.

"The feature is designed specifically to help agents deepen existing relationships, not prospect strangers," the spokesperson said.

Consumer consent comes first: The collaboration period stays active until the consumer chooses to disconnect, the Zillow spokesperson clarified. There's no agreement to sign; it's a consumer-initiated action through an invitation they receive from their agent.

"Zillow does not share any activity insights with an agent without that explicit consent," the spokesperson said.

Zillow Pro is meant to reach consumers at the point in their home search process when they start to want their agent in the loop. The consumer's default Zillow experience — including for those who scroll through listings with no intention to buy — remains unchanged.

"Real estate runs on relationships, and we see time and again the agents who win are the ones who show up at the right moment with the right information," Zillow SVP of Product Cynthia Taylor said in a news release.

"Now any agent can have the tools and visibility to do that across their entire business," Taylor added. "This is our commitment to helping agents get more out of the platform where their clients are browsing, dreaming and planning."