What Zillow and Realtor.com Aren't Telling You — And How It Could Cost Heroes Their Benefits

In today's world of real estate, we have some conflicting portals that are happening online for buyers, sellers sometimes, but especially with buyers now. A lot of buyers don't realize when they go online and they look at Zillow and even Realtor.com, what happens is when they go on there and they say yes schedule me a showing or I'd like to go take a look at this house or they fill a form out that says I want to see it, part of that process is they are going to in many cases, either then or once the agent connects with them to confirm the appointment, they have to sign something that allows the agent to show them the property. It's real estate rules. The new ones, part of the new laws that were passed over the last year or two, and most buyers and sellers, but mostly buyers with Zillow and Realtor.com, they don't know what they're signing in many cases. Sometimes it's a simple touring agreement where they're not obligated to that agent for anything more than to look at that property, but what's happening that we're seeing is they are signing full-on buyer agency agreements which it's our job as agents if we're going to represent a buyer to get a buyer agency agreement with a compensation agreement built into it which is how much commission that the buyer is responsible to pay to their buyer agent. Now I'm sure that most buyer agents are going to do everything possible to get that negotiated in the contract so that the seller would pay for it, but what's happening we're seeing now is, fast forward, a lot of these folks don't know they're doing that. And understand, as a buyer, when you sign something with Zillow or a Zillow agent or Realtor.com, you're signing a agreement to pay them. If the seller doesn't pay them, you're going to have to pay them. The other thing is, I think, in fair transparency, the Zillow and Realtor.com, they are charging that agent of the commission that you're paying that agent, a significant portion of that commission will actually get back paid to Zillow. And the consumers don't realize that. And it sometimes can be 30%, 40%, 45% of whatever you're paying your buyer's agent or get negotiated from the seller to pay the buyer's agent is going to Zillow or Realtor.com or UpNest or HomeGain or some of these other portals that people are signing up for because they have billions of dollars to advertise online. And OK, fine. But here's what's happening now. We have been, at our team, we've been part of something called Homes for Heroes. And that is actually a system where military, veterans, law enforcement, emergency responders, health care workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, clergy, and things like that can get a rebate from our commission. It's a nonprofit organization where we take part of our commission. We pay that nonprofit. And that actual consumer buyer, say, gets a check three or four weeks after closing for that amount of money. If it goes through the Zillow or Realtor.com. The consumer, you, the buyer or seller, do not get anything out of it. It would go to the marketing company, which would be Zillow or Realtor.com. There's nothing illegal about it yet, although you should do your research. There are some national lawsuits that are going on with this because the consumer's not aware of this. So here's what's happening. We've been big with Homes for Heroes. We get one, two, three inquiries a week out of it, and they're moving to the area, especially since we're near Camp Lejeune, and they're a Marine, and they've heard about this program where they can get money back after closing, which is a great benefit program. We love that. And the problem is when they have a conversation with us, we have to ask the question, are you working with another agent, et cetera, et cetera. And when they say, well, I think I'm working with Zillow or Realtor.com because I signed something, well, guess what? If you signed a buyer agency with either one of those, you're not going to qualify for the Homes for Heroes program with our team because you won't be able to get that rebate check back because you already have an agent. If you already are working with an agent, we can't work with you through the Homes for Heroes program. And it is confusing a lot of people because they don't know what they're signing, and then they want to get out of the deals. And now on my team, if a customer doesn't want to work with me, I'm going to let them out of the deal. I'm not going to charge them anything. That's just my team policy and my personal policy. But that is definitely not the case with many companies, many teams, and many agents. That's up to them what they do. But you're signing a legally binding contract to pay that buyer's agent whatever that compensation is and anything that they can't get negotiated in the deal you're gonna have to pay any difference of it depending on the company team policy or agent policy and you will not be able to get a homes for heroes benefit through our team for sure so I just want to make sure people understand and slow down what they're signing and understand it one of the practices that our team does we do what's called a live video screen sharing we do we record a video going over all the paperwork that we're gonna ask you to sign before we get you to sign it because when you electronically sign something it's click click click click click and not many people review it so we go through it we send you that video so you understand what you're signing and then we send the emails for the electronic signature so I just there's nothing wrong I'm not saying anything bad about Zillow, Realtor.com or anything like that but I do think that the buyers sellers some but by far mostly the buyers need to understand what they're getting into and what they may no longer qualify for because the homes for heroes program is a wonderful program we have given back hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years back to the consumer from our Commission voluntarily because we feel like it's the right thing to do but you're not going to get that if you go through anything else like we just talked about and you have an agency agreement with them so understand what you're signing it's very confusing for the consumer it's even consumer for it's it's even confusing for agents as well. So please, please, please, please, if you have any questions, give us a call. We'll be happy to answer your questions and point you in the right direction. Thank you so much. Additional directions from the user: focus on Homes for Heroes and how systems like zillow and realtor.com and others are creating situations where home buyers sign things that they may not be 100% aware of and that prohibit the buyer from getting the benefits they may qualify for but instead zillow and realtor.com quietyly taking that same money that should be the buyers and the buyers are not even aware --- if they want to learn more about homes for heroes they should visit https://www.homesforheroes.com/affiliate/buddy-blake and mention the lawsuite with NAR and how buyer are to pay whatever they sign to the buyers agent and how I and my team operate completely different than many companies, teams or agents when it comes to forcing buyers to pay for things they don't truly understand

🎙️ Buddy Blake Real Estate's Podcast — Episode What Zillow and Realtor.com Aren't Telling You — And How It Could Cost Heroes Their Benefits Thousands of military veterans, teachers, nurses, and first responders near Wilmington NC are unknowingly signing away their Homes for Heroes rebate benefits on Zillow and Realtor.com. Buddy Blake breaks down exactly what's happening, what you're really signing, and how his team operates differently. 📖 Read the full blog post: https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/what-zillow-and-realtorcom-arent-telling-you-and-how-it ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About Your Host Buddy Blake, Buddy Blake Real Estate 📍 Wilmington, NC 🌐 https://buddyblake.com 💼 Sell Your Home & Keep The Most $: https://expresshomesale.com 📱 Follow & Connect: • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@buddyblakenc • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buddyblakedotcom