Zillow now wants $9.99 per week for > 1 rental listing

[Calvin Lin]

Happy New Year BP community.

I just got an email from Zillow rental manager saying that starting in Feb if I have > 1 rental listing I have to pay $9.99 per week for each listing.  This is for the Raleigh NC area.

Anyone else seeing this?  I wonder if I post in other sites it will cross post to Zillow for free?  Zillow is such a popular RE site I would hate to lose it but $10 per week is a bit steep in my opinion.

[Joe Splitrock]

I think some of you are not looking at this from a business perspective. You are getting hung up on the fact something was free and is now costing money.

Lets say you have a property that rents for $1200 and it is vacant in a month with 30 days. Every day that property sits vacant costs you $40. Every week costs you $280! 

So tell me if you could spend $10 and get it rented even one day earlier, would it be worth it? It would from a financial perspective, so why let your emotions control the decision?

Here is the bottom line. Business is not about what something costs, but rather what you get in return. Renters are using Zillow and they are not paying money, so they will keep using it. If you chose to not use Zillow, you will not reach those perspective tenants.

One other advantage of the fee structure is that it give incentive for landlords to take down listings once they are filled. Renters tell me all the time that listings are up there when the property was rented or landlord won't even respond.