Compare Zillow Offers and Trulia

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 Sellers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Trulia is an MLS Aggregator, it does not provide listing services to consumers.

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.

For Buyers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Trulia is an MLS Aggregator, it does not provide buyer representation services to consumers.
Question: What is the difference between Zillow Offers and Trulia?
Answer: 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 while Trulia is a Multiple Listing Services (MLS) aggregator
Compare Zillow Offers and Trulia 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: 17 February 2019
Last updated: 25 April 2021

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.

Buying and Selling with Trulia

Trulia is an MLS Aggregator that allows buyers and sellers to list homes and find out what local homes are available for sale. Trulia aggregates home listing data from thousands of private MLS databases across the United States.

By making this otherwise unavailable information to consumers, the company creates a positive value-added experience with local results for a vast majority of available listings.

Trulia generates revenue with ads using Zillow Group's Premier Agent and Premier Broker programs.

Trulia Pricing

Trulia does not offer paid services to consumers directly, instead, portal generates revenue with ads and referral fees from real estate brokers as part of the Zillow Group.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Trulia Editor's Review:

Trulia is a Zillow Group subsidiary with similar search results, data, and options available to consumers. Trulia is an Internet MLS aggregator, where brokers and consumers may post listings independently. Until recently Trulia was an Internet company, not a real estate broker.

In 2018 Trulia’s parent company Zillow Group began to operate a pilot program called Zillow Premier Broker.

This program operates as an actual real estate broker in order to collect hidden referral fees from any leads originated via Trulia. Anytime consumers use Trulia and provide this portal with private information, this information is then sold for referral fees to a select group of brokers willing to pay for it. This fee is backloaded and paid only if the consumer is persuaded by the real estate agent to enter into a representation agreement.

Trulia’s original revenue generator is called Premier Agent, this is an ads-based process where agents advertise their services and consumers contact an agent themselves.

Unlike Premier Broker leads pipeline, Premier Agent process is not “blind.” When consumers use Trulia, it is impossible to tell if private information is sold to Premier Brokers and what brokers get to see it. When using Trulia, consumers should be careful not to leave any private information such as email, name or a phone number.

Where does Trulia operate?

Trulia currently operates in select areas across United States.