Zillow’s shift to populating its flagship listings portal with an IDX feed has not been without some kinks, but the company has already addressed one of the biggest issues that arose during the massive migration.
The company restored past listing history to agent profiles on Jan. 21, ahead of the Jan. 26 deadline the company originally provided. Now the company is working to fix an issue with all active listings appearing on agent profiles — although they are still available on the search portal.
“On January 21, we shipped a fix to restore past sales on agent profiles,” a spokesperson for Zillow told Inman. “We are working diligently on a solution and anticipate active listings will be restored on profiles within the next two weeks.”
The issues arose when Zillow switched the back-end of Zillow.com, the nation’s most-visited residential real estate portal, to an IDX feed, which was a requirement of the company becoming a licensed brokerage.
The company announced last year it was becoming a licensed brokerage because it was planning on having its own agent-employees manage transactions through its homebuying and selling platform Zillow Offers.
When the company officially made the switch earlier this month, in some cases, the email address the agent uses for Premier Agent was not matched because the MLS does not provide an email address with the listing, which subsequently resulted in display issues around past and active listings on agent profiles.
A number of agents expressed frustration with the disappearance of the past sales history, although a Zillow source said most agents and the industry have appreciated the company’s transparency around the bugs and given the company grace as it works through issues.
“Extremely aggravating that my sales history has disappeared,” Christine Bohn, a Realtor with RE/MAX, said in a comment on an earlier Inman report on the changes. “Any consumer looking at my profile sees no sales in the last 12 months.”
Among the other changes are a greater emphasis on promoting agent-represented listings, a change in the way buyers’ agents advertise on the platform and the elimination of the pre-foreclosure advertising program.
