When we list a home, we don’t want to just put it on the MLS, upload some photos and hope buyers find it.

A huge part of selling a home now happens before a buyer ever schedules a showing. They’re looking through photos, watching video, checking the layout and deciding pretty quickly which homes are actually worth seeing in person.

That’s one of the reasons we’ve started using Zillow Showcase on our listings.

Showcase gives us a better way to present the professional media we’re already creating, and it gives our sellers some added advantages on Zillow that a standard listing doesn’t get.

Zillow Showcase isn’t something every West Michigan agent offers

This is an important distinction.

Zillow Showcase is a premium product that agents and real estate teams subscribe to. It isn’t automatically included when a house gets listed, and it isn’t something every agent in West Michigan has access to or includes as part of their marketing. Zillow says Showcase pricing varies based on the number of listings and the markets an agent works in.

For us, it’s another investment we can make in how our sellers’ homes are presented.

And we think it’s worth it.

Your home gets better visibility on Zillow

This is probably the biggest benefit.

A Showcase listing doesn’t just look different once somebody clicks on it. Zillow also gives it additional visibility while buyers are searching.

Showcase properties can receive priority placement in Zillow search and map results, larger and more prominent listing imagery, special Showcase markers and dedicated emails to buyers whose search criteria match the home.

So when we spend the time creating great photography, video and floor plans for a property, we’re also giving that media a better chance to actually be seen.

According to Zillow’s latest Showcase data, active Showcase listings averaged:

84% more page views
77% more saves
93% more shares

compared with similar nearby non-Showcase listings on Zillow.

Those numbers are a big reason we like it.

More views alone don’t sell a house, but getting more buyers to stop, look through the property, save it and send it to someone else gives us more opportunities to create real interest.

Buyers can understand the house before they ever walk through it

One of our favorite parts of Showcase is the way it handles floor plans.

Photos are great at showing what a room looks like. They’re not always great at showing how a house actually fits together.

With an interactive floor plan, buyers can get a much better feel for where the kitchen sits in relation to the living room, where the bedrooms are, how the basement is laid out and how the different spaces connect.

Showcase can pair the floor plan with the photography and 3D Home tour, so instead of flipping through a bunch of disconnected images, buyers can actually explore the property.

This is especially useful on homes with bigger layouts, finished basements, multiple living spaces or features that are difficult to explain with photos alone.

Our listing videos become part of the experience too

We put a lot of effort into video because some parts of a property are simply easier to show than describe.

A video can show how the kitchen opens into the living space, how the backyard feels from the house, how much land is actually there or what surrounds the property.

That’s especially important here in West Michigan.

We market everything from homes in Grand Rapids neighborhoods to acreage, lake properties, newer developments and homes where the location itself is a big part of what makes the property special.

Showcase gives us another place to put that media in front of buyers while they’re already interested in the home.

The sales data is pretty hard to ignore

This is the part sellers usually care about most.

According to Zillow, Showcase listings sell for 2% more, or about $7,000 more on average, than similar non-Showcase listings on Zillow.

Zillow also reports that Showcase listings are 10% more likely to go pending within their first 14 days compared with similar nearby non-Showcase listings.

We’re not going to tell someone that putting Showcase on a listing magically adds $7,000 to the sale price. That’s not how real estate works.

The price still has to make sense. The condition of the home matters. The neighborhood matters. The market matters.

But we absolutely believe presentation and exposure matter too.

If more buyers are seeing the home, spending more time looking at it and getting a better understanding of what they’re buying, we’d rather give our sellers that advantage.

It makes professional photography even more valuable

We already use professional photography because the first few images of a listing can determine whether someone keeps looking or moves on.

Showcase is built around that media.

The photos are larger and more prominent, rooms can be organized in a way that makes sense, and the whole listing is much more visual than a standard property page.

That gives us more room to show what actually makes a property worth seeing.

Sometimes that’s a great kitchen.

Sometimes it’s the backyard.

Sometimes it’s five acres, a pole barn, lake frontage or a finished lower level that completely changes how someone views the house.

We want those things to be obvious when a buyer first finds the listing.

Showcase is one part of the marketing

We don’t look at Zillow Showcase as the entire marketing plan.

It’s one piece of it.

We still want professional photography. We want video. We use drone photography and video when it helps tell the story. We create floor plans. We market properties on social media and use online advertising when it makes sense.

Showcase helps tie a lot of that together on Zillow and gives the listing some additional visibility once it’s there.

That’s really what we’re after.

We want someone who finds one of our listings online to immediately understand that there was some thought put into how the home was marketed.

Selling a home in West Michigan?

If you’re thinking about selling, we’d be happy to show you what the marketing could look like for your home before you ever put it on the market.

Every property has something different that needs to be highlighted, and our job is to figure out what that is and make sure buyers see it.

For many of our listings, Zillow Showcase is now another tool we can use to help make that happen.