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After months in limited market release, Zillow’s Listing Showcase is now nationwide.
The company announced in a Feb. 21 press release that the AI-driven marketing stack for listing agents sold under the ShowingTime+ brand is now ready for primetime. Zillow said that the testing period showed that on average, the elevated exposure resulted in homes going to pending status 15 percent faster than nearby listings.
Listing Showcase is an amalgamation of technologies Zillow has acquired and blended as part of a wider effort to add software-as-a-service to its business, known by many as the “super app” concept.
By scooping up a number of marketing technologies, such as VRX Media and Areyo, companies that offered a range of creative services, such as interactive floor plans, virtual staging, image enhancement and in-app photography coordination, and image management, ShowingTime+ is able to offer the industry a vertical marketing stack. Traditionally, brokerages and agents work with an array of disconnected third-party vendors.
The appeal of Listing Showcase is broad, but primarily it highlights the listing agent, cleary demarking the home as theirs to sell. The web page uses AI-based image rotations, determining what images consumers react to most often and ensuring those stay prominent. Property hero images are digitally enhanced, room photos automatically labeled upon upload and floor plans made interactive to respond to the user’s perspective.
“Most recently, a floor plan has been added to the map display within a listing, providing shoppers with a clear picture of the home’s orientation and placement on the property,” the release stated.
While acquiring ShowingTime in 2021 made the industry take notice of what the property portal was up to, the purchasing of popular CRM Follow Up Boss at the end of 2023 put a bold, wet stamp on its plans. Long-maligned as anti-agent, Zillow is shifting toward an agent services model, proving it can serve both the practitioner and the consumer and leverage what it learns about the latter for the advantage of the former.
Other data shows that the right photo of a property can help it trade faster. Computer vision company Restb.ai, which has been scanning millions of listing photos for years, told Inman that it can directly tie increased listing traffic to high-end, sharply edited exterior photos.
Nathan Brannen, Restb.ai’s chief product officer, told Inman in an interview that dark photos or washed-out skies deter shopper interest.
“We did do a study on overcast photos. Is it dusk? Or if it’s snowy, and studied the impact on price. We found that photos taken in overcast conditions were on the market for an average of 12 days longer. So, those companies doing sky-replacement edits, it’s worth it,” he said.
ShowingTime+ is making Listing Showcase available at a range of affordability levels, for all size brokerages, the company said. The company makes available its national network of photographers through another agent-facing offer, Listing Media Services.
Cynthia Taylor, vice president of ShowingTime+, said in a statement that ShowingTime+ is “one-of-a-kind” and helps buyers make more informed decisions on what homes they want to see in person.
“This product is a prime example of ShowingTime+’s work to provide tech solutions that make the whole process easier for everyone involved in a home sale,” Taylor said.
