Product Roundup: Zillow, Realtor.com, Immobiliare.it and Avito

Here are the product and services updates from the world of real estate marketplaces we've spotted this week...

United States: Zillow partners with HomeServices of America via its Showcase product

Zillow and HomeServices of America have partnered to provide an AI-powered listing experience via Zillow Showcase.

In a press release this week, Zillow said the partnership has "provided significant advantages to HomeServices of America" since its agents began using Zillow Showcase in the second half of 2024.

The enhanced listing experience boosts the online presence of HomeServices' brands, attracts more buyers and drives business growth in a competitive market, said Zillow.

Zillow added that its Showcase product helps HomeServices agents present homes with rich, interactive listings designed to captivate potential buyers. Listings with Zillow Showcase tend to sell for 2% more than standard listings, adding more than $9,000 to the average sale price.

Soumya Tulloss, Zillow's senior vice president of agent sales, said:

"We are thrilled to support HomeServices of America in delivering exceptional service and results to their clients with Zillow Showcase, further solidifying their position as a leader in residential real estate.

"Zillow Showcase provides brokers with a unique market advantage, making it an invaluable tool for recruiting and retaining top agents through unparalleled marketing exposure they can't get elsewhere."

Chris Kelly, executive vice president of HomeServices of America, said:

"At HomeServices of America, we believe in empowering our clients when it comes to marketing their home, and we're excited to bring the Zillow Showcase offering to our agents.

"Showcase amplifies a home's exposure by tapping into Zillow's consumer reach, giving our sellers greater visibility in the marketplace. It also provides our agents with a powerful differentiator to win more listings and deliver even stronger results on behalf of their clients."

HomeServices of America operates leading brokerage companies nationwide.

Realtor.com builds new integrated lead flow

Realtor.com has rolled out a unified Global Lead Allocation (GLA) system designed to make lead routing smarter and more efficient.

Previously, lead matching was handled through multiple disconnected systems, often creating friction between consumers and agents. The new platform replaces that with a single, intelligent solution that improves the quality of lead matching and increases value for both sides of the transaction.

The new GLA combines several legacy systems to introduce vetting and enrichment for every lead, leveraging multiple data points for a more dynamic process.

Blogging on the company's website, Kyle Snow, an engineer at Realtor.com, wrote:

We [have] transitioned from a fragmented approach that often resulted in inefficient matching of homebuyer leads to agents and brokers to a unified platform that intelligently routes leads. The new system enables more personalized and accurate matches, improving the overall experience for homebuyers while optimizing lead quality and ROI for agents and brokers.

Over the years, Realtor.com has acquired multiple companies, each with its own lead allocation systems. This resulted in a fragmented ecosystem where leads were often siloed.

The new architecture unifies multiple legacy systems while creating a more performant, scalable, and auditable lead allocation process.

The new system means more intelligent and personalized matches with agents, brokers, and lenders. We can now make real-time decisions based on market conditions, which helps connect consumers with the right professionals faster. For agent and broker customers, it offers a better return on investment (ROI) by providing more configurable and efficient lead routing.

Europe: Immobiliare.it launches another Croatian brand

Italian portal operator Immobiliaire has launched another brand in Croatia, where it has previously operated Crozilla and Indomio. Nekretnine uses the Italian Immobiliare technology platform that is already present in Spain, Greece and Luxembourg.

A press release claims that the portal already has over 150,000 listings and over 600 agents using the service though did not mention if either the Crozilla or Indomio brands would now be closed down to make way for Nekretnine.hr.

Mladen Matijević, General Manager of Nekretnine.hr, stated:

"The Croatian real estate market is dynamic and attracts both domestic and international buyers thanks to its unique combination of quality of life, natural beauty, and investment potential. With Nekretnine.hr, we aim to harness that potential and offer a modern, intuitive platform that simplifies the property search and strengthens the connection between buyers, sellers, and professionals in the sector. Our goal is to contribute to the development and transparency of the market by providing innovative tools and up-to-date information to support informed decision-making.”

In a LinkedIn post, Immobiliare.it founder and CEO, Silvio Pagliani, said Nekrenine "will be the leading brand of our group in Croatia, enabling us to provide an even better service to professionals in the sector and all those looking for a home."

Avito says its LLM is more powerful than Google and OpenAI

Russian horizontal marketplace Avito has announced its proprietary neural network, A-Vibe, scored better than OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic among lightweight models in Russia.

The findings came from the independent Russian benchmark MERA. Lightweight AI models have no more than 10 billion parameters.

A press release from the marketplace giant included findings that A-Vibe was 23% better at text analysis than Claude 3.5 and 25% better at generating code than Gemini.

Andrey Rybintsev, Senior Director of Data and Analytics at Avito, said:

"First place proves that optimized architecture and high-quality data can provide excellent results even with a small model size. This balance allows for fast processing of requests even during peak load periods and scaling the technology to the entire audience of the platform."

A-Vibe is already working in Avito services to help sellers create sales descriptions, speed up communication in its messaging tool, and source appropriate search results faster using neuro-tags.