Compare Jovio and Zillow Offers

For Sellers

Listing Rate
1%
Commission
A minimum listing fee of $3,995 and other terms may apply. Buyer's Agent Commission (2.5%-3%) is not included, but sellers may be able to negotiate this as well.

For Sellers

Cash Offers
15%-20%
Home Equity
Zillow Offers does not provide real estate listing representation. Instead, the company buys homes directly, repairs and resells them to consumers or companies that rent them to tenants. Zillow Offers typically makes an offer equal to estimated 80%-85% of home value accounting for fees and any cost of the repairs and resale.

For Buyers

Buyer’s Savings
33%
Commission Rebate
When Jovio Real Estate represents home buyers, it contributes 33% of its Buyer's Agent Commission (2.5%-3%) to the buyer as a way to financially compete for buyer’s business. Home buyers do not pay any taxes on the amount, the refund amount is always tax-free. A minimum commission and other terms may apply.

For Buyers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Zillow Offers does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Zillow Offers does resell some of the homes it buys on the open market, just like any other real estate investor aiming for the highest return on investment.
Question: What is the difference between Jovio and Zillow Offers?
Answer: Jovio is a full-service real estate agent that offers savings to homebuyers and home sellers while Zillow Offers is a direct home cash buyer that buys select homes off-market with cash offers and resells them at a profit to homebuyers
Compare Jovio and Zillow Offers for home buying and selling. HomeOpenly is an impartial and an open resource focused on trending real estate services, portals and start-ups.

First published: 31 August 2019
Last updated: 25 April 2021

Buying and Selling with Jovio Real Estate

Jovio is a full service real estate agent based in Austin, TX. Jovio offers consumers listing savings and buyer's refunds in select service areas across Texas.

Jovio Real Estate Pricing

Offers consumers listing savings to sellers (1% listing fee) and buyer’s savings (33% buyer’s commission rebate)

Listing Services

  • MLS Listing
  • Zillow, Trulia, etc. Listing
  • Accept and Deliver All Offers and Counteroffers
  • Hold Open Houses
  • Professional Photography
  • Professional Floor Plans
  • Yard Signage Installation
  • Spare Key Lock-box Installation
  • Schedule Inspection Services
  • Schedule Private Showings
  • Closing Duties

Buyer's Agent Services

  • Find the Property
  • Accept and Deliver All Offers and Counteroffers
  • Recommend Other Professionals
  • Attend Inspection Services
  • Schedule Private Showings
  • Negotiate Needed Repairs
  • Closing Duties

Jovio Editor's Review:

Jovio offers excellent representation services for buying and selling a home. Jovio is a tech-enabled brokerage with the knowledge and tools built to help consumers archive an excellent real estate transaction experience.

Jovio listing service includes posting home on the MLS and MLS Aggregator services, professional photos, and all typical services offered by a traditional real estate agent. Jovio charges a listing fee of 1% of the final sales price of your property. A minimum listing fee of $3,995 applies. If at any point during the term of the listing agreement the seller decides to terminate the said agreement, she is only responsible for paying $495 setup fee.

Jovio recommends offering a cooperating buyer agent commission that helps to attract buyers who are already working with an agent. Sellers are free to offer any amount they like to buyer’s agents, but 2.5% - 3% Buyer’s Agent Commission is recommended. Buyers can easily negotiate a rebate with their agent to reduce the costs of the Buyer’s Agent Commission amount. Eventually, all closing costs are paid by the buyer.

Jovio claims to list a home in as little as 24 hours. The majority of Jovio sellers get their home listed within several days of meeting with Jovio. To determine your home’s listing price, Jovio first gathers local information about comparable properties in your neighborhood. Jovio furthers helps to evaluate your home’s condition and any recent upgrades or improvements to come up with the best listing price for the home.

When self-represented buyers approach Jovio about the seller’s listing, Jovio reduces the 3% Buyer’s Agent Commission to 2% in favor of the seller and then splits its commission with the buyer, meaning buyers receive 1% (33% buyer’s commission rebate) back on their new home. This allows all parties to save a significant amount in buy-side commissions, but it also requires the buyer to accept the potential downside of dual representation.

For buyers, Jovio Real Estate offers on-demand home tours and an excellent client web portal for monitoring the purchase process. Jovio offers overall great value to consumers looking to buy or sell a home.

Where does Jovio operate?

Jovio currently operates in select areas across Austin, TX; Houston, TX; San Antonio, TX; Dallas, TX; Barton Creek, TX; Bee Cave, TX; Del Valle, TX; Garfield, TX; Hays, TX; Hornsby Bend, TX; Lost Creek, TX; Manchaca, TX; Mc Neil, TX; Onion Creek, TX; Pflugerville, TX; Rollingwood, TX; San Leanna, TX; Shady Hollow, TX; Sunset Valley, TX; West Lake Hills, TX; Cedar Park, TX; Round Rock, TX; Lakeway, TX; Westlake, TX; Elgin, TX; Leander, TX; Georgetown, TX; Hutto, TX; Taylor, TX; San Marcos, TX, and Kyle, TX..

Buying and Selling with Zillow Offers

Zillow Offers is a real estate investor and an agent referral network that operates across highly specific locations. Where available Zillow Offers mainly focuses on homogenous homes. In determining the offer, Zillow Offers discounts from the estimated retail value after home is fully renovated.

Zillow Offers Pricing

Zillow Offers is almost entirely built to sell consumer’s data to Premier Broker and Premier Agent participating agents. Zillow also makes money with a difference between buying and selling homes, although only about 1% of all requests end up in successful Zillow Offer.

With these few actual buying transactions each year, Zillow makes money with value appreciation between what Zillow Offers buys and seller each home for. Sellers can expect to receive 80%-85% of their home value from this type of sale after any fees, cost of the minor repairs, and resale.

Zillow Offers further looks to push consumers to use its own mortgage company.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Zillow Offers Editor's Review:

Skip the hassle, it is only 1% likely that sellers will accept an offer from Zillow Offers. Instead, Zillow will try to convert seller's request into a lead, sold to random Premier Agent.

Zillow Offers is a classic bait-and-switch sales model. First, consumers are "baited" by Zillow’s magical all-in-one home offer opportunity, but out of tens of thousands requests only a few dozen homes are actually sold to Zillow. Instead, Zillow’s business model aggressively converts consumer requests into seller leads. The interesting thing about this scheme is that Zillow is blatantly open about it.

Here are some excerpts from Zillow Offers website:
  • "Initial data from Zillow Offers indicates that of sellers who request a Zillow Offer, the vast majority end up using an agent."
  • "Zillow Group does not guarantee that it will make an offer or that any offer made will provide the best terms available or will result in the greatest net proceeds to you."
  • "If you do not accept our offer, we can refer you to one of our local partner agents who advertises on Zillow."

Zillow Offers suffers from terrible privacy policy. From one side Zillow states to consumers that "we do not share your contact information unless you request to be connected with an agent or a mortgage lender," and on another section directed at brokers it states that "if a seller is not yet working with an agent and they decline Zillow’s offer, Zillow will work to immediately connect them with a local partner brokerage and agent."

Here is how one of these Premier Brokers describes the process:
  • "We receive listing and buyer referrals directly from Zillow's Premier Broker concierge services. These leads have been scrubbed and vetted before they are directly handed off to you."Source: Sonoma County RE/MAX Marketplace, Zillow Premier Broker participant.

Zillow Offers will buy a home at a price that is below market value due to necessary repairs, renovation, and other factors. After Zillow Offers buys the home, it renovates and resells it for a profit to other buyers or companies that rent homes to qualified tenants. With low offer price, comes a convenience of an all-cash closing when selling a home. Zillow Offers claims to provide convenience, speed, and certainty of a fast sale.

Dubbed as an iBuyer, Zillow Offers makes an offer on a house within days, but this offer is highly conditional. Each offer Zillow Offers makes is just an estimate until it makes a home inspection. At the inspection, Zillow Offers will often find reasons to lower its original offer when it finds items that need repair or if it has made a mistake in its original valuation. When the company is unable to make an offer, it simply redirects consumers to a random real estate agent in exchange for an undisclosed fee. Zillow Offers only makes offers for select homes in select regions.

The main disadvantage of using Zillow Offers is high losses in homeowners’ equity, this is beside the fact that the program is designed to collect and sell user data instead of actually buying homes.

As any real estate investor, Zillow Offers is susceptible to losing money in any given transaction. This model is susceptible to a number of risk factors, high operational costs and a continued need for higher-than-average Return on Investment (ROI) with each flip. Zillow Offers is not legally bound to represent consumers, its main legal obligation is to its shareholders.

Zillow Offers’s fast transaction and easy move-out experience typically come at an extremely high price because this model incurs “double” transaction costs during the purchase, holding period, rehab work and final sale that includes real estate agent fees.

Zillow Offers pays real estate agent commissions like any other buyer and seller of real estate, so these costs must be accounted for in the company’s fee structure. Moreover, because most homes in the United States are financed, homeowners own only partial net equity in their home. Banks receive the same amount of the remaining mortgage sum regardless of how any given home is sold, whereas only homeowners’ net equity is lost in transaction fees paid to Zillow Offers.

Typically Zillow Offers uses the following factors when determining the offer: existing condition of the home including repairs needed, time it will take to finish needed repairs, value of a home compared to other comparable homes in the area, real estate commission required to resell, costs associated with maintaining a home during repairs, including taxes, payments, insurance, utilities and homeowner dues.

Where does Zillow Offers operate?

Zillow Offers currently operates in select areas across Raleigh, Charlotte, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.