Kelley Blue Book enters home valuation and seller lead market
A new pricing model for seller leads
The differentiator is how agents pay. Rather than surrendering a commission slice on closed deals, Zillow’s model charges agents up to 40% of their commission on referred leads, while KBB Homes operates on a subscription. Agents pay a monthly fee to capture 25%, 50%, or 100% of incoming seller leads within a defined ZIP code.
“Agents are just sick and tired of that model. It’s extractive. 40 percent is a lot,” said John Liss, chief executive of TrueFootage, the Irvine-based appraisal technology company driving the platform’s expansion.
“For high-performing agents, it’s giving up too much for the work that the agents are doing.”
A crowded field of new entrants
KBB is far from the first brand to see opportunity in home valuation. Zillow launched its Zestimate automated valuation model in 2006, making it among the first AVMs made broadly available to the public. The company later attempted direct home buying through Zillow Offers before shutting that program down in 2021.
Opendoor, founded in 2014, built its entire iBuying model around algorithmic valuation, the disruptive premise that the traditional process of selling a home was broken, slow, and expensive, and that data-driven algorithms could provide instant cash offers.
