Paradise Valley resident Greg Hague is on a mission.

The founder of 72SOLD and Phoenix real estate power brokerage Hague Partners is launching a new real estate website aimed at going toe-to-toe with nationwide home search websites like Zillow and Realtor.com.

Last month, Hague wrote an article about the drawbacks of trying to find homes for sale on Zillow and Realtor.com. The big problem is those websites have a lot of stale home inventory and they make it difficult to connect with the listing agent, the person who knows the most about the home.

 Their business model is about capturing buyers’ information to sell to real estate agents who then pay for those leads.

Hague says most people think of Zillow and Realtor. com as home search websites designed to help them buy and sell homes. But as Hague points out, “When you go to Zillow’s website to look for a home, Zillow tries to turn you into a lead for one of its “paying” agents. Instead of connecting with the listing agent for the home, you end up being directed to an agent who often knows nothing about the home.”

He continues, “This is obviously bad for buyers because they talk with agents who have never seen the house. It’s also harmful to sellers because buyers interested in their home end up talking to an agent who knows nothing about it, and may even try to switch those buyers to a different home where that agent could make more money.” Hague especially dislikes the fact that Zillow’s “Premier Agents” don’t earn the title... they pay for it. A Forbes article that ran a few years ago corroborates Hague’s observation, in which it said, “Premier Agent is a program in which real estate agents pay up to have their names, faces and contact information posted alongside listings of other agents. It’s an ad program designed to shove ads into the faces of prospective buyers without them even realizing. When a buyer clicks to contact the agent, the buyer is unwittingly directed not to the listing agent, but to a Premier Agent. The program was set up to make it highly probable that a buyer would contact a Premier Agent rather than the listing agent.”

Hague further comments that Zillow “buries” the names of listing agents so buyers are more likely to connect with its pay-to-play agents.

Popular real estate news outlet Inman News also reported: “Since its inception, the Premier Agent program has created a maelstrom of confusion with consumers appearing at property showings expecting to find the listing broker, only to find a Premier Agent. Even worse, buyers have shown up at properties with their broker representatives only to be accosted by a Premier Agent claiming to represent them.”

Hague is introducing  SeeHomesFirst.com as  that allows buyers to easily  connect directly with listing agents and to even learn about new homes on the market before they are published on Zillow or Realtor.com...a true homebuyer advantage in this competitive market. “It took a lot of legal effort and software development to make this happen. I have worked on this for years to figure it out,” Hague says.

He believes there is a desperate need for a transparent home search portal on which buyers can easily connect with listing agents of the homes they are interested in and not have their information “sold off ” to an agent who probably knows nothing about the home.

Not only that, Hague developed SeeHomesFirst. com to give homebuyers an advantage, being able to learn about new listings before they’re available to the general public. He intends to make SeeHomesFirst. com the predominant home search website in Arizona.

When a homebuyer goes to SeeHomesFirst.com, the first thing they see are the latest homes, fresh on the market, with the ability to connect quickly with the listing agent so they can be the first to see, and have the first opportunity to buy, homes they are interested in.

Buyers can also put in their home search preferences and the website’s high tech home match processor will notify them by text within one minute of a matching listing being uploaded. They can click on the text message and be connected immediately with the listing agent.

The SeeHomesFirst website is designed to offer advantages to buyers, sellers and the agents who represent them. Buyers will learn about homes before the general public. Sellers and their agents will have a new source of buyers and be able to connect with them quickly.

He concluded, “This is a much needed gift to my industry and the people it serves.”

Hague plans to launch SeeHomesFirst.com in Phoenix in January 2022.