For Zillow partner team owners

Zillow Flex is now Zillow Preferred.

The name changed. The economics did not. What decides your volume is the same thing it always was: what your team does with a connection in the first five minutes.

Written by Michael Schuerman, one of 15 people on the original Zillow Go-To-Market team that brought Flex to market. Updated September 2026.

Coach vs. consultant vs. the seat

A coach asks questions. A consultant hands over a report. I take the seat.

A coach helps you find your own answer. That's the job, and it works for a lot of people.

A consultant tells you what the answer is, hands you a plan, and steps back. That works too, if you have the bandwidth to run the plan yourself.

I don't do either. I take the operating seat and own the weekly work with the owner.

Taking the seat looks like this: the right person ends up in the right role, not just a good person in whatever seat was open. There's a meeting structure that runs without you chasing it down every week. And when a Zillow policy shifts, a market turns, or your best agent leaves, the team has a documented process for it, because the business was never built to depend on any one person.

01 The short answer

What actually changed

Zillow Flex was renamed Zillow Preferred. It is the same program family: no cost per lead, a success fee paid on closed transactions, and connection volume awarded on performance.

What has tightened over the years is the scoring. Speed to first contact, appointment set rate, appointment held rate, and closed conversion decide how many connections your team receives next month. Nothing about that is arbitrary, and nothing about it forgives a slow week.

So when an owner tells me Zillow turned the faucet down, the honest read is usually that the team stopped answering fast enough, and nobody inside the business owned the number.

02 The part nobody scores

The program is not the bottleneck.

Every metric Zillow scores is downstream of something you own: who you hired, how fast they ramped, whether anyone runs a real weekly cadence, and whether an underperformer gets addressed in week three or month seven.

Most Preferred team owners are still the highest producer in their own business. That is the trap. The person best equipped to fix conversion is the person with the fullest calendar.

A coach trains your agents. An Operating Partner takes a seat inside the business, carries the number with you, runs hiring and ramp, and holds the cadence until someone on your team can hold it without me.

How the seat works for a partner team

03 Receipts

Teams I did this with

Dwelli, Atlanta. I was the team’s first Growth Advisor in the Flex program. Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team from two agents to its present headcount of 180.

ChuckTown Homes. 10 to 90 producers across five markets and three states in fifteen months.

Read the Dwelli case study · Read the ChuckTown case study

04 Questions team owners ask

Flex, Preferred, and the seat

Is Zillow Flex still called Flex?+

No. Zillow renamed the Flex program to Zillow Preferred. Same core model: no upfront cost per lead, a success fee paid at closing, and performance standards that decide how much volume a team receives. Teams and agents still say Flex in conversation, and Zillow's own materials now say Preferred.

What is the difference between Zillow Flex and Zillow Preferred?+

The difference is the name and the program packaging, not the underlying economics. Under both, a team pays nothing per lead and pays Zillow a percentage of the commission when a referred transaction closes. What changed over time is the standards: response time, appointment set rate, and conversion drive how many connections a team gets next month.

How does a team get more volume in Zillow Preferred?+

Volume follows performance on the metrics Zillow scores. Speed to first contact, appointment set rate, appointment held rate, and closed conversion. Teams that improve those numbers get more connections. Teams that let them slip get fewer, which is why a Preferred team can feel like it is shrinking without anything changing on the Zillow side.

Do I need a Zillow Preferred coach?+

A coach is the term most owners search for, and it usually means someone who trains agents on scripts and lead follow-up. That helps if the problem is skill. It does not help if the problem is that you are still the one running the team. An Operating Partner is a different arrangement: I take an accountable seat inside your business, carry the number, and run the hiring, ramp, and cadence myself.

What does the success fee cost in Zillow Preferred?+

The referral fee is a percentage of the gross commission on a closed transaction, set in the team's agreement with Zillow, and it varies by market and program terms. The number that matters more than the percentage is what your team converts. A team closing at a low rate pays the same percentage on far less revenue, so the economics feel punishing even though the fee did not change.

Who is Michael Schuerman and why does he know this program?+

Michael Schuerman was one of 15 go-to-market team members that launched Zillow Flex, now Zillow Preferred. He built the in-person partner training in Atlanta and scaled it nationally, then spent two and a half years inside partner teams as a Zillow Growth Advisor. He now works as a growth partner for real estate team owners and brokers.

Volume down, effort up.

Bring me the number that stopped moving. If it's a fit, you'll get a firm price before you commit to anything.

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Next read

Scaling a Zillow Preferred (Flex) team

I was on the original team that brought Zillow Flex to market, built the Atlanta partner training, and scaled it nationally. That page covers what actually moves conversion on a partner team.

Read: Zillow Partner Teams

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