Guest contributor Sam Debord of REALTOR®Mag says:

Brokers loathe Zestimates and most other online home valuations because they're riddled with inaccuracies. Our agents end up spending far too much time explaining away bad data and poor pricing information to their clients.

But the online valuation is attractive to consumers, and brokers can use it as an effective teaching tool to attract sellers to their own businesses.

Brokers and agents can sign up for automated valuation tools as standalone websites or have them integrated into their current websites. By driving traffic to these pages, brokers can connect their agents with sellers, educate them, and convert the leads into listings – a valuable prospecting stream in these inventory-scarce times.

How It Works

There is a wide variety of valuation tools available to brokers and agents, but the mousetrap is very similar. It starts with a landing/squeeze page, which tells users: "Get an instant online valuation for your home." Users are then prompted to input their address. Once a user's address is captured, the system stores the location of a potential home seller.

The second step asks the home owner for a little bit of information about their home and some contact information so that a full value report can be delivered to them. When that information is entered, a report on comparables and a value range are delivered to the user based on tax data. The user's contact information and address go to the broker or agent who buys the valuation service.