Do I Need My Own Website If I Have Zillow and a Brokerage Page?

If you are getting all the business you want from referrals and repeat clients, no. Save your money. But if you are trying to grow, or you ever plan to change brokerages, then yes, because everything you are relying on right now belongs to somebody else and can be taken away or changed without asking you.

That is the honest answer, and it cuts both ways. I sell websites for a living and I have talked agents in Wallingford and Southington out of buying one from me, because their real problem was that nobody had asked their past clients for a review in two years.

What you are borrowing versus what you own

Your brokerage page is rented. It usually lives on a domain the brokerage controls, it follows a template you cannot change, and it disappears the day you move. Every bit of search traction it built goes with it.

Your Zillow profile is rented too, and worse, it puts you on a page beside other agents paying to be seen there. That platform makes money by selling attention on top of your own listings. You are a tenant in a building where the landlord also rents to your competitors.

Your Facebook business page is rented. So is your Instagram. The reach you get is whatever the platform decides to give you that month.

A site on your own domain is the only piece you keep. It follows you between brokerages, it does not show competitors next to your name, and nobody changes the layout on you overnight.

Where the real difference shows up

Three places, in my experience.

Search results for your own name. When somebody in North Haven gets your name from a friend, the first thing they do is type it into Google. If what comes back is a brokerage template and a Zillow profile with four reviews from 2021, that is your first impression. If it is your own site with your story, your listings and twenty recent reviews, that is a different conversation.

Search results for the towns you work. Brokerage templates almost never rank for "Cheshire real estate agent" because thousands of identical pages are competing with each other. A site with a real page about Cheshire, written by you, has a shot.

Anything you want to say. Market updates, a first time buyer guide, what closing costs run in New Haven County. There is nowhere on Zillow to put that so it works for you.

When I tell people to skip it

If you closed eight deals last year and all eight came from people you know, a website is not your bottleneck. Your bottleneck is that you have twelve reviews and the newest one is from 2023, or that your Google Business Profile is not verified. Fix the free things first. That is a month of work and it costs nothing.

If you are two years from retirement, skip it.

If you cannot commit to touching it four times a year, be careful. A site that never changes is not much better than the brokerage page you already have. Not worse, but not the leap people expect.

What it should cost you

For a solo agent or loan officer, a straightforward site with five or six real pages runs between $1,500 and $3,500 as a one time build in this market, or a few hundred a month if somebody is also writing content for you. Anyone quoting $12,000 for a five page site is charging you for their office.

Watch the ownership terms more than the price. Ask who holds the domain registration, who has the login, and what you leave with if you stop paying. If the answer is that the site vanishes when the retainer ends, that is a rental with extra steps, and you already have two of those.

The middle path most people miss

You do not have to choose. Keep the Zillow profile and the brokerage page, since they cost you nothing and they catch people who are already there. Point them at your own site. Your Zillow bio, your Instagram link, your email signature, your business cards.

Then put your effort into the two things you own: the site and your Google Business Profile. Those are the only two assets in this list that compound.

Questions I get after this one

If you want a straight answer about your own situation

I put together a free 90 Day Growth Plan for agents, loan officers and local owners around Wallingford. I look at what already exists for your name, where your Google Business Profile stands, and whether a site would move anything for you this year. Sometimes the answer is that you should spend the money on reviews and photos instead, and I will tell you that.