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When it comes to selling your home, every decision matters—including where and when your property is marketed. For years, many homeowners have assumed that getting their home on Zillow as quickly as possible was the key to attracting buyers and achieving the highest price. However, emerging research is challenging that long-held belief.
The report below takes a closer look at how public listing sites can influence buyer perception, negotiating leverage, and ultimately a home’s sale price. Whether or not you agree with every conclusion, it raises important questions about the value of a thoughtful marketing strategy versus simply maximizing online exposure from day one.
As a real estate professional, I believe homeowners deserve to understand all of their options before making one of their largest financial decisions. An informed seller is an empowered seller. I encourage you to read the research below and consider how a strategic, phased marketing approach may help protect your home’s value and put you in the strongest possible negotiating position.
Suzanne
For years, Zillow has led sellers to believe that getting their home on Zillow.com quickly was important to sell their home. But new research analyzing over 300,000 homes revealed: homes on Zillow consistently sold for less. We call this loss the “Zillow Tax.”
The Hidden Cost of Listing on Zillow
To understand the financial impact of listing on Zillow, Compass Chief Economist Mike Simonsen and Chief Data Officer Dave Crosby analyzed the performance of listings that did not appear on Zillow, and compared them to nearly 300,000 listings that did. The analysis proved that homes listed on Zillow sell for 1.3% less, on average, than homes that were not on Zillow. The Zillow Tax on the U.S. median existing-home sale price of $430,000 translates to a $5,590 loss.
The “Zillow Tax” Hurts Sellers
Zillow wasn’t created to protect homeowner value – it is a lead-generation website built to make Zillow money at the expense of sellers. Zillow sells leads, not homes.
There is not a single feature on a Zillow listing page built to help sellers protect the value of their home; in fact, Zillow reduces the home’s sales price:
- Days on Market: When a buyer sees a home that’s been on the market a long time, their perception is that there is something wrong with the property.
- Price Cut History: Publicly showing every price cut makes it look like the seller is desperate, which encourages buyers to ask for even bigger discounts.
- Algorithmic Zestimate: Often the Zestimate is less than the value of the home.
- Climate Risk, Flood Risk & Fire Risk: By showing these unofficial and arbitrary risks, Zillow makes the home look less valuable.
- False Advertising: Zillow routes buyers to third-party agents who paid for the lead and often divert the buyer inquiry away from the home. A Wharton School study found that nearly 99.7% of consumers mistakenly believe that Zillow’s “Contact Agent” button connects them to the listing agent.
Independent research points the same direction. Dr. Darren Hayunga, a professor at the University of Georgia, studied 20 years of Dallas-Fort Worth home sales and found that sellers who avoided the “negotiation discount” from having days on marketing and price drop history on the MLS and Portals sold for 1.7% more, with the premium jumping to over 8% for luxury properties.
Why Do Some Of The Largest Home Builders Avoid Zillow
If exposure on Zillow was truly necessary to maximize price, the most sophisticated home builders in the world would rely on it. But they do not.
80 Clarkson Street, the condominium built by Zeckendorf Development, achieved over $1 Billion in contracted sales, including the most expensive home in downtown Manhattan history, without a single listing ever appearing on Zillow. If Zillow truly helped them get the best price, these industry leaders would certainly be using it.
Protecting Your Home’s Value
The “Zillow Tax” isn’t inevitable. Sellers have a choice. By choosing a phased marketing strategy, sellers can test price, receive feedback, build buyer interest and create buyer urgency before the clock starts, and reduce risk.
Methodology
Compass economists analyzed 296,966 Compass listings posted between January 2025 and May 2026, 806 of which experienced a Zillow ban.
The median sale-to-list price ratio for banned listings is 100%, compared with 98.7% for non-banned listings. Using quantile regression, we can confirm the difference of 1.3 p.p. (± 0.8 p.p.) is statistically significant. Additionally, 50.5% of banned listings sell at or above their list price, compared with 44.6% of non-banned listings—a difference of 5.9 p.p. (± 5.6 p.p.) that is also statistically significant. This trend persists when controlling for market, price, agent, and pre-marketing strategy.
The analysis also found that when comparing homes banned by Zillow to homes not banned by Zillow, there is no significant difference in the likelihood or speed of a home going under contract.
For listings banned by Zillow, 34% signed a contract within 30 days, compared with 36% of non-banned listings. The observed raw difference of -2.1 percentage points falls within the margin of error (± 3.3 p.p.) and is statistically insignificant. Controlling for market, price, and agent results in a difference of 2.5 p.p. (± 3.2 p.p.), which remains statistically insignificant. We measured the likelihood of homes going pending in all time horizons—not just 30 days—and found no significant difference in performance between banned and non-banned listings.
