We purchased our home in 2018 and a year later the images from the original listing are still on Zillow. It absolutely freaks me out that people can just Google my address and take a 360 degree tour of the inside of our home. I’ve procrastinated contacting Zillow because I did not want to deal with the stress of navigating through an automated system and unread e-mail. But, as they say, “I had time today!”
I will begin by saying that I don’t know if this will work for other Listing apps but it works for Zillow. First you will need to claim ownership of the property. Even if you did not list the property for sale, you will be able to claim the property on Zillow as the person who purchased the home. The below is how I “Claimed My Home”
- Log into your Zillow account
- Search your home address
- Click the drop down menu under “More”
- Click “Verify Your Ownership”
- The next page will take you through a few questions to verify your ownership
Once you’ve claimed ownership you will then have access to both the Public View and the Owner View. Under Owner View simply click on drop down menu under “More” and click Add Photos. This is where most people would give up and get frustrated because there is no option to “Delete Photos”. Does Zillow do this on purpose?
Once you click Add Photos a page will come up displaying all the images and videos that are currently under your home’s profile – even if you did not originally add them. This is where it gets more frustrating because once you are on the gallery, it doesn’t give you an option to delete the image! Zillow has to do better. I tried dragging the photo to see if there was a recycling bin, I tried right clicking on the photo…nothing.
Then I used the brain that the good Lord gave me and just clicked on the image. Voilà!! The bad part is that you have to remove each photo individually. The prior owners had 80+ photos on the listing of our home.
One you’re finished removing photos, be sure to click Save. The updates are visible to the public immediately.
I feel so much better knowing that pictures of the inside of my home are not on Zillow. For Trulia, you actually have to e-mail them. Go to
https://www.trulia.com/help/ask/. I e-mailed them at 10am and the images were gone by 5pm the same day,. Realtor.com works similar to Zillow, you have to claim the property and then click Remove Photos. One click removes all images but it takes 1-2 business days to update publicly. I also found a video of my home on YouTube and the person who listed the video does not have any contact info. I did leave a comment on the video asking the uploader to remove the vidoe but no action has been taken to date. I am in the process of filing a Privacy Complaint with YouTube via Google, which is not simple because every step tries to sway you away from filing the complaint.
