Should You List Your House on Zillow? Pros + Cons

When you’re ready to sell your home, the number of options can feel overwhelming. There’s listing it yourself, listing it for sale with a realtor, creating a listing on Zillow, and selling to a home cash buyer like Home Buyers Birmingham. Let’s dive into whether or not it’s worth it for you to list on Zillow. We’ll cover the pros and cons, and then outline another great option for you to sell your house without the stress.

What is Zillow + How Does It Work?

Zillow is a for sale by owner (FSBO) platform. When you’re looking to sell your home yourself instead of using a real estate agent, FSBO is a good option. The benefits of selling your home yourself include getting more money (due to no commission payouts), having more control over the sale, and being able to market your home how you see fit. However, there are downsides to FSBO as well, such as your safety during showings, figuring out marketing strategies, complying with local Alabama laws and regulations, and having to qualify your buyers.

Although there are pros and cons choosing to go FSBO, if you do decide to do so, Zillow is a great place to list your home. Zillow is a website for online real estate listings. Because Zillow garners so much traffic (over 70% of all online real estate search traffic), it’s one of the first stops for home buyers and sellers.

When you list on Zillow, you have the advantage of being exposed to lots of traffic and potential buyers. But you’re also responsible for all of the work that accompanies selling a home, including marketing, listing, negotiating, pricing, staging, and closing, not to mention the actual paperwork! Zillow is free to use and has no fees.

What are the Advantages of Using Zillow?

Using Zillow helps you avoid the costs of commission fees. Usually, real estate agents get 6% of the sale. However, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of that extra cash versus the time and effort of doing it yourself.

With Zillow, you get more control over your property listing for your home in Birmingham, Alabama. Although you’ll need to do the research on your home’s market value, you can control what the listing looks like and how it is marketed. This appeals to many sellers, especially those who are attached to their homes or believe that a realtor wouldn’t secure the best possible price. Plus, you have control over all of the eventual showings. Instead of waiting for your agent’s availability or worrying about last minute showings you weren’t prepared for, you can schedule them at your own leisure.

Since Zillow is free, you get to pocket the cash that you would’ve had to pay for a realtor’s commission. This is one of the biggest appeals of using a tool like Zillow!

A final huge benefit is your expertise. Although your realtor has technical knowledge of selling a home in Birmingham, Alabama, you have targeted, specific knowledge of your neighborhood. You can talk directly to potential buyers about your neighborhood’s benefits, your home’s particular charms, and any other perks they should know about. This is something your realtor won’t usually know as much about, so it’s an area you can shine with using Zillow.

What are the Cons of Using Zillow?

Even with all of those advantages, there are a few risks to using Zillow. Since you won’t have access to a real estate agent’s expertise and knowledge, you’ll have to do everything yourself. That means you’ll also need to potentially take some trial and error for pricing, marketing, and negotiation. If you mis-price the home, you could have a difficult time finding a buyer. Plus, marketing the home will be a challenge.