Zillow Assault - The Hordes are Attacking!
Chuck Ponzi December 7th, 2006
Man the battlestations, NAR, the fort is under siege from all sides… first the DOJ lawsuit, then the tanking housing market, and then this…
I don’t know if anyone else has posted on Zillow’s new functionalities, but when I stumbled back to their site today, I realized that they have made some changes… and this is how I believe this is a groundbreaking change.
Here’s what the press release says:
What’s New with Zillow?
- Post homes for sale and set your Make Me Move Price: In the biggest upgrade since the site launched in February, Zillow now allows homeowners and agents to post homes for sale, for free. Any homeowner can also set a Make Me Move price – redefining what it means for a home to be “For Sale.” Be sure to check out our screen shots of the new features as well.
- Real Estate Wiki: Read and contribute to more than 150 articles on buying and selling real estate – an incredibly comprehensive resource that has been seeded by Zillow editors and is updated by the community.
- Quarterly Home Value Reports: What is the real estate market doing in your area? Has appreciation slowed down or is it still going strong? Get the details on what is happening to the housing market in our Q3 2006 Home Value Reports. A national report is available, along with specific reports in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami.
- Open API: Now any consumer Web site can recreate Zillow’s functionality on their domain free of charge, including Zestimates, home data and comparable sales information. Check out our implementation with Yahoo! Real Estate and learn more about our open data policy in these blog posts.
- Zillow Opens Up Database to Let Users Contribute: Did you recently add a new deck to your house? Homeowners can now add remodel information, update or change facts (such as square footage, beds/baths, etc.), as well as provide more specific details such as a waterfront view, type of parking or roof composition.
- Zestimates to Go! Check out Zillow Mobile, the latest test creation from Zillow Labs. Send an address via your cell phone or Blackberry and get an instant Zestimate and home facts. Walking the dog will never be the same…
- Broadcast: We now have downloadable Zillow video and soundbites. See our broadcast newsroom for info.
- Our database is growing: the new tally is 68 million homes, with 49 million Zestimates
OK, if that doesn’t leave you a little surprised, think about this: Is this another step in real estate disintermediation?
Post Homes for Sale For Free
The NAR, CAR and local realtors associations have had a stranglehold on information about for-sale properties, what if all of that information were suddenly free and open to everyone? What role would a real estate agent hold in the transaction process other than to advise a buyer. With Zillow allowing sellers to list their properties for free… there is more and more incentive to at least double-post (and what is better than free?) on the MLS and this. Or, at the very least, for free on Zillow. Now users can compare AND shop at the same time. Hello Craigslist of homes…
In many cases, real estate agents are not acting in their clients’ best interests since closing transactions is their primary goal, not getting the best price. On the other hand, 3% to a listing agent for posting your house on the MLS is a hefty price.
Of course, we already know that many agents will scream that there is a lot more marketing… True, but most homeseekers now use the internet to find their next home. Even the NAR now concedes that internet use to find a home is nearly ubiquitous… 77% of housebuyers in 2005 used the internet, up from 2% in 1995 and that number is expected to only increase.
Then, there’s the issue of negotiating and super-local sales prices. Well, that’s for history to decide. In many cases, financial models will outperform individuals own abilities to correctly price from the beginning, but it does not solve the problem. But, are sellers really going to part with 2 or 3% of the value of their home for a few hours’ of work? I am willing to guess that they won’t and sellers commissions will likely decrease further in the future. In this case, misinformation servers sellers’ agents quite well… when people are better informed as to what they are actually getting for their money… then we will see a real revolution.
On the other hand, I still believe that the buyer’s agent commission will remain largely intact. This is due to the many opportunities to rebate back a portion of this amount to the buyer… The buyer is then incentivized to buy the house, not the agent, and sellers will want to do all they can to incent a buyer in a slowing market. This is already a full practice among a number of agents and brokerages, most notably Zip Realty and a local broker I have previously highlighted, Brad Davidson of We Help-u-Buy Realty who offers to rebate a substantial amount of the rebate back to the buyer.
Make Me Move
Let’s just assume for a moment that everything is for sale in life… everyone and everything has a price. What would yours be?
Well, now you can snoop around and find out what perfectly fine people like yourself would be willing to take to move out of their home, even though it’s not for sale officially.
Sounds pretty cool to me. Novel idea.
Other interactive “Innernet” Gobbleygook
The rest of the enhancements of their site is basically for internet nerds and those wanting to post information about the Zillow valuations directly on their sites. Sounds very cool to me, but it’s not really for the masses yet.
Most of all, it’s all free, of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but this is a lot closer.
Does this spell the end of the NAR? No, but it might just be the beginning of a very serious liposuction for the group.
