Within a year, home owners in Miami and seven other U.S. cities will be able to request no-obligation cash offers for their homes from real estate database company Zillow.
Seattle-based Zillow Group will introduce its Zillow Offers service in Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Nashville, Orlando and Portland by the fall.
This year, Zillow also plans to introduce the service in Dallas, Houston and Riverside County in California.
Zillow Offers allows a home owner to sell his or her home directly to Zillow, which then prepares the property for showings and lists it for sale. Zillow pays a commission to local real estate agents when it buys and sells each home.
The Zillow Offers service helps home owners to synchronize the sale of a home and the purchase of a new one. Research by Zillow shows that 61 percent of home sellers also are buying.
The company launched Zillow Offers last year in Phoenix, then introduced the service in Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Las Vegas and Raleigh. – Mike Seemuth