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Zillow Preferred Goes 100%: What Agents Need to Know Now

ByElizabeth Nolan

Last Updated on November 6, 2026 by Elizabeth Nolan

By the first half of 2027, every Zillow buyer referral will go to a Zillow Preferred agent. Preferred is invite-only and pay-at-close. If you’re not in it, Zillow-routed buyers won’t come to you.

The short version:
  • Premier Agent ads stop bringing in buyers. Paying for a ZIP code got your contact box next to listings. Once Preferred hits 100%, Zillow routes every buyer referral to a Preferred agent instead.
  • You can’t buy your way into Preferred. It’s invite-only, based on your closing track record. The main path runs through Zillow Pro and Follow Up Boss, so you’re working inside Zillow’s tech.
  • Your listing’s Zillow page has its own routing rules. Who gets the buyer depends on the button clicked and whether the listing is standard, Preview, or Showcase. The breakdown is below.

What Zillow announced

Zillow laid out the timeline with its Q3 2026 earnings on November 4. CEO Jeremy Wacksman told Inman that Preferred will be 100 percent of connections.

Zillow says Preferred earns it 35% more revenue per referral than ads did. That’s Zillow’s revenue, not yours. Asked what happens to Premier Agent advertisers who don’t qualify, Wacksman didn’t say.

Zillow’s agent programs

  • Referral (Zillow calls it a “connection”). A buyer asks to talk to an agent on Zillow. Zillow calls them, confirms they’re ready, then hands them to an agent (Zillow FAQ).
  • Premier Agent. The old model was really just a well-placed ad. You bought a ZIP code. Your photo and clickable contact info then showed up in a box next to listings in that ZIP. Zillow called it buying leads. In practice, you paid for ad placement whether or not anyone closed. Pricing varies by ZIP (Zillow).
  • Flex. Zillow’s pay-at-close referral program for top teams. It was renamed Preferred. Anyone in Flex on or before October 15, 2025 was grandfathered in automatically.
  • Zillow Preferred. Flex’s successor. Invite-only. No upfront cost, but you pay Zillow a referral fee at closing.

The tools around Zillow Preferred

  • Zillow Pro. A paid tech membership, nationwide since July 2026. It lets you see your own clients’ Zillow search activity once they accept your invite. Separate from Preferred, but now the main path in.
  • Follow Up Boss. The CRM Zillow owns. Separate from Preferred, but required for Preferred agents.
  • Zillow Showcase. A paid ad wrap around a single listing, with bigger photos and the listing agent featured up top. It has its own media requirements and pricing (more below). Separate from Preferred, but Zillow expects Preferred agents to use it.
  • Zillow Preview. Zillow’s pre-market listing status, shown publicly before a listing goes active in the MLS. Your brokerage has to opt in. Separate from Preferred and not required, but tour requests on Preview listings go to Preferred agents. Your brokerage gets a referral share if one closes. More in Zillow Preview Hits Realtor.com.

What Zillow Preferred costs

You stop paying for ads upfront. You pay Zillow a referral fee when the deal closes, reportedly 15%–40% of your commission (The Close). There’s no fee to join, but Follow Up Boss is required (Zillow FAQ).

Run your own math. On a $600,000 sale at 2.5%, your side is $15,000. A 35% fee sends $5,250 to Zillow before your brokerage split. Compare that to what you spent per closed Premier Agent deal. For the math at two price points, see Paid Leads in 2026.

The fee isn’t one-and-done. Zillow collects on up to two transactions with the same referral within two years (Zillow Help Center). A buyer who later sells with you can trigger a second fee.

How agents get into Zillow Preferred

Zillow invites teams based on their track record of closed transactions. It also wants to see you already working in its ecosystem (Zillow Preferred):

  • A Zillow Pro membership
  • Active use of Follow Up Boss and Showcase
  • A history of buying Premier Agent ads

Former Flex members were grandfathered in.

Zillow Pro: the main door

Zillow Pro is a paid tech membership that any agent can buy. But there’s no public price, a 12-month default term, and an early-exit fee (The Close). Buying it does not guarantee you get into Preferred.

Zillow quoted $138 a month for a single seat when it announced Pro (Inman). It’s sold to agents and teams, one seat at a time. Unlike Showcase, I haven’t found any brokerage-wide Pro deals. The likely reason: Pro is essentially Follow Up Boss with Zillow’s data layered on top. A brokerage with its own CRM would be paying Zillow for a competing system. I covered the lock-in and data-sharing trade-offs in Zillow’s All-In-One Tech Stack.

What Zillow sees once you’re in

Once you’re in, Zillow tracks response time, conversion, CRM use, and closing paperwork. Better numbers mean more referrals in your ZIP codes.

Preferred agents sync deal details from Follow Up Boss and upload closing documents within four days so Zillow can calculate its fee (Zillow Help Center). Your broker is jointly liable for that fee, so your brokerage is in it too. And any Follow Up Boss contact who also has a Zillow account becomes “mutual customer data” Zillow can use (Follow Up Boss).

Agents already worry about their brokerage CRM seeing and keeping their contacts. Here, Zillow gets a view of them too. That’s part of the price of Zillow buyers. Check your brokerage’s data and compliance policies before you sign.

What if your brokerage has its own tech?

Preferred requires Follow Up Boss, which Zillow owns. If your brokerage runs another CRM, you’d be running two systems. Check your brokerage’s data policy and get your broker to approve the referral fee first.

At Compass and the Anywhere brands, it’s walled garden versus walled garden. Compass is moving agents onto its own platform while fighting Zillow in court. Yet some Compass teams reportedly get 40–50% of their business from Zillow (Zillow newsroom). If that’s you, expect to run two systems and answer to two sets of rules.

Who gets the lead on your own listing?

It depends on how the listing appears on Zillow and which button the buyer clicks. On a standard listing, neither big button goes to you. Your name sits lower on the page, under “Listed by.”

Listing type“Contact Agent” goes to“Request a Tour” goes to
Standard (free)A Premier Agent or Preferred agentA Premier Agent or Preferred agent
Zillow Preview (free; your brokerage must opt in)You. If you don’t answer, it goes to a Preferred agent.A Preferred agent. Your brokerage gets a referral share if they close.
Zillow Showcase (about $150–$1,000+ per listing, plus media)You, featured up top. If you don’t answer, it goes to a Preferred agent.A Premier Agent or Preferred agent. Nothing comes back to you.

Note: paying for Showcase doesn’t capture tour requests. On a Showcase listing, “Contact [agent]” sits inside the listing agent’s box. “Request a tour” sits in a separate box with no agent name, just like on Preview listings, where Zillow says tour requests go through its buyer agent network (Zillow). Once Preferred hits 100%, every “Premier Agent or Preferred agent” above becomes a Preferred agent. Zillow hasn’t published how long you have to answer an inquiry, so treat each one like a live call.

Sources: REMAX Zillow FAQ, Effective Agents, Inman, SofaBrain. A homebuyer class action is also challenging the “Contact Agent” button (Business Wire).

Showcase in brief

  • What qualifies. HD photos, a virtual tour, and an interactive floor plan, shot by a photographer with Zillow-approved equipment (Zillow).
  • Who pays. The listing agent or brokerage, not the seller. Brokerage deals cut the price. REMAX agents pay $150 a listing, and BHHS gives all its U.S. agents access (HousingWire). No brokerage deal means it comes out of your marketing budget.
  • Exclusivity. Zillow caps Showcase at about 10% of listings in a market (Zillow).
  • You don’t need to be Preferred. Showcase is a listing product. You get branding and direct inquiries, but no buyer referrals, and the tour button sits apart from your contact box and runs through Zillow’s buyer agent network.
  • Seller referrals. Preferred agents reportedly must Showcase about 90% of listings that come from Zillow seller referrals (Jamil Academy). In my market, Zillow seller referrals are unheard of, so Showcase is a marketing choice here.

A Showcase trap I’ve seen firsthand

Showcase is an ad wrap tied to the property address, not the MLS number. An agent took over a listing another brokerage had run as a Showcase. When it went live, the old Showcase was still running. All the launch promotion pointed to the previous agent. In my view, that misrepresents who the listing agent is.

I think the new listing went live too quickly. Given a little time, Zillow’s system likely would have picked up the old listing’s cancellation through the MLS feed and turned off the Showcase. Timing matters.

Taking over a listing that was on the market before? Give the old listing’s cancellation time to reach Zillow before you go live. Check the Zillow page for an active Showcase first. If one is still running, ask the prior agent to cancel it. If they don’t, Zillow support can fix it.

What to do if you’re not invited

  1. Know your exposure. What share of last year’s closings came from Zillow?
  2. Rebuild your sphere. Past clients and referrals don’t carry a 15%–40% fee.
  3. Use your brokerage’s tools. At BHS, that includes Cloze Listing Match.
  4. Keep it simple for sellers. Don’t walk them through Zillow’s routing. If they ask, a one-liner works: “Zillow’s buttons often go to other agents, so I make sure buyers can reach me directly.” Then show them how.
  5. Drive buyers to your own channels: your sign, listing page, social posts, and brokerage site.

Why does all this matter?

Because buyers still start on Zillow. In Q3 2026, Zillow drew 77% of monthly unique visitors in the real estate category, according to Comscore (Zillow Q3 results). Zillow says that’s an all-time high, and about 80% of its traffic comes straight to Zillow, not through Google (Q3 earnings call). Its traffic dipped 3% to 215 million monthly users, but the whole category fell faster.

Zillow also runs much of the plumbing. By its own count, ShowingTime handles tours on more than 90% of homes for sale, and dotloop handles nearly half of all closings.

So the agent Zillow hands a buyer to has a head start. By then, Zillow has already called that buyer and confirmed they’re ready to work with an agent. At 100% Preferred, Zillow decides who that agent is, not your ad budget. Even if you never take a Zillow referral, your listings, your buyers, and your paperwork still run through its systems.

The bottom line

Zillow is done selling buyer leads. It’s now a referral network with an invite list. If you’re out, you have until mid-2027 to replace that pipeline.

Related on Agent Hub:

Sources

Licensed Real Estate Salesperson

Licensed real estate agent with 15+ years of experience at Connecticut's top brokerages including Coldwell Banker, Halstead Property, and Brown Harris Stevens. Currently Marketing Coordinator at Brown Harris Stevens and founder of Agent Hub, an educational platform for independent real estate agents. MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School.

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