It’s been a while since I’ve tried to post my properties for sale by owner on Zillow. I just went through all the motions and things were going fine until I wasn’t able to answer the automated phone call. It gave me a number to call back and I’ve been calling it relentlessly to call them to get this listing verified, but I get a busy tone every time I call.
Has anyone else had this experience? What’s the trick to getting through to them?
@charlotteirwin, I did have this same problem with a lot a few months ago. I can’t recall whether I initiated a trouble ticket through a webform that I might have found somewhere on their site, or if I just found this email address somewhere and started with it, but ultimately I ended up resolving it via email with [email protected].
Edited to add: Unfortunately, regarding whether Zillow still works, in my very limited experience lately (2 lots listed there over the past ~3 months; 1 of those just listed about a week ago), it hasn’t been very helpful for my land listings. The Google Voice number that I added to my latest listing began getting spammed like crazy within 24 hours of the listing going live (realtors who aren’t even local to the area, and don’t specialize in land, wanting me to list with them; flat-fee MLS listing services; and several calls not leaving a message). Nothing even close to a serious inquiry. Just one small datapoint, but thought I’d share. I’d be interested to hear others’ impressions of Zillow for selling land by owner, lately.
Edit #2: In case it’s helpful, this is what I sent to Zillow’s “care” email address regarding the issue getting the listing up…
“I am trying to post a listing for a vacant parcel in [COUNTY], [STATE] (county parcel ID #[PARCEL_ID]). My list price is [LIST PRICE]. Since it is vacant land, there is no street number assigned yet. I have attempted to post this listing multiple times, starting over 1 week ago. I have not received a phone call yet, and the listing is not posted. My phone number is [PHONE]”
I have not tried Zillow recently but I do have a property on Facebook Marketplace. I have gotten a few valid responses but no spam -yet. We’ll see.
@dl7573 thanks for your feedback. My listing did eventually end up getting approved, even though I never connected with Zillow on the phone. Kind of strange. I’m not sure why they even put that formality in place if they were going to post my listing even without talking to me about it anyway.
@dl7573 said:
The Google Voice number that I added to my latest listing began getting spammed like crazy within 24 hours of the listing going live (realtors who aren’t even local to the area, and don’t specialize in land, wanting me to list with them; flat-fee MLS listing services; and several calls not leaving a message). Nothing even close to a serious inquiry.
It’s been a few days now and I have gotten one spam call so far, so I can vouch for the accuracy of that. Hard to say how many more spam calls I’ll get, but one thing I haven’t gotten yet is a legitimate lead from an interested buyer. Too soon to tell what the outlook will be over the next few months but if I discover anything worth sharing, I’ll be sure to post it here.
@charlotteirwin said in Zillow FSBO - Does it still work?:
Hard to say how many more spam calls I’ll get, but one thing I haven’t gotten yet is a legitimate lead from an interested buyer.
Ever since zillow became a brokerage and relegated FSBO listings to a separate tab, I’ve seen a decrease in buyer leads. I usually give it a couple of weeks on Zillow, and then just pay a couple hundred bucks for a flat fee MLS listing to get it in front of more people if the FSBO listing isn’t getting any traction.
@lindah said in Zillow FSBO - Does it still work?:
@charlotteirwin said in Zillow FSBO - Does it still work?:
Hard to say how many more spam calls I’ll get, but one thing I haven’t gotten yet is a legitimate lead from an interested buyer.
Ever since zillow became a brokerage and relegated FSBO listings to a separate tab, I’ve seen a decrease in buyer leads. I usually give it a couple of weeks on Zillow, and then just pay a couple hundred bucks for a flat fee MLS listing to get it in front of more people if the FSBO listing isn’t getting any traction.
Linda,
Where are you finding a flat fee MLS listing service for a couple hundred? I have a couple properties I would like to do this on.
Thanks!
@sempervirens Maybe it depends on the market, but $200-300 is what I’ve generally seen where my properties are located. I just did a search for “flat fee mls in <closest big/medium city to property>”
I found that once they started hiding the for sale by owner listings I stopped getting leads from them.
@charlotteirwin I just sold one through Zillow FSBO, so I can verify that it still works as of June 2022.
I actually posted this property ONLY to Zillow and nowhere else. I was doing a little experiment to see if Zillow was still effective, and also because I didn’t feel like messing around with any other sites at the time, because I’m busy. 
It was on the market for about 3 months before the cash buyer came through. I had probably gotten 5 buyer leads during that time. Only a couple of them sounded serious and one of those two just pulled the trigger to buy a few days ago.
While Zillow definitely has its limitations with all the changes they’ve made in recent years, we probably can’t write it off just yet.