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What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

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Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#61

Post by bcg1 »

Sold my house this summer. My wife listed the house on Zillow and took nice looking pictures and put a good description. We also paid a real estate agent $300 to list our house in the MLS (and we would handle the rest of the sale). Once our listing was in the MLS Zillow brought in the crapified compressed JPEGs from the MLS feed and overwrote our description etc, and locked us out from further edits. Fail.

Zillow is going about this all wrong... their advantage is that they aren't the MLS system, they are the best positioned to be an alternative to the NAR cartel. If anything THEY should have agents in every town who will put your house into the MLS for you for $300, as well as allow enhanced listing on their site at the same time... they might actually make some money that way, and also it would solve their MLS problem. Instead they seem to want to beg the cartel for a seat at the table. Pretty sad.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#62

Post by dang »

zorpner wrote: post #52
dang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, we reverted to the original title plus a representative phrase from the article. Submitted title was "Zillow using cease-and-desists to kill posts about their listings". I don't think it broke the rule—more likely the submitter was trying to follow the rule by rewording something linkbaity. But since people don't agree about this we've taken another shot.

Ok, we reverted to the original title plus a representative phrase from the article. It combines the clickbait of the original title with a specific industry term that people will have to look up separately! I genuinely don't understand how you could think that this is a better title for this post.

I don't, particularly; just trying to make the dreaded title fever subside.

If you can suggest an accurate, neutral title that uses representative language from the article, we'll happily change it again.

Edit: deleted "MLS" since "listing gap" means much the same thing without it.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#63

Post by drewmeyers24 »

ohitsdom wrote: post #16
MikeKusold wrote: post #14

When I was looking for a condo this past summer, I used RedFin. Since RedFin ties into MSLs (basically a list that all realtors use), I knew about listing before my agent could email me about them. I highly recommend it, even if you have a non-RedFin agent.

Zillow used to tie into MLSs but their access was cut in most areas (as described in the article) due to a dispute. Used to be an awesome resource, now it's a ghost town. Would think it's only a matter of time before realtor.com shuts down similar sites like RedFin.

"realtor.com shuts down similar sites like RedFin"

Realtor.com cannot shut down redfin

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#64

Post by gdubs »

bcg1 wrote: post #61

Sold my house this summer. My wife listed the house on Zillow and took nice looking pictures and put a good description. We also paid a real estate agent $300 to list our house in the MLS (and we would handle the rest of the sale). Once our listing was in the MLS Zillow brought in the crapified compressed JPEGs from the MLS feed and overwrote our description etc, and locked us out from further edits. Fail. Zillow is…

In the end, do you know whether Zillow or the MLS listing led to the sale?

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#65

Post by ohitsdom »

paulgb wrote: post #39
tyre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Sites can ban traffic for any reason they choose. You're using their servers and they have the right to determine how those servers are accessed. They don't need a specific "right" to control their servers. Likewise, users on the internet have no "right" to access anything.

> Likewise, users on the internet have no "right" to access anything Yes, they have a right to block you, but that doesn't imply that a terms of service which prohibits automated access is legally enforceable. A TOS is not a contract so you can't put whatever you want in there and expect a court to honor it. To my knowledge US courts have not decided ohitsdom's question, but I could be wrong. However, if the site mak…

Thank you, this is the type of info I was looking for.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#66

Post by rdtsc »

bcg1 wrote: post #61

Sold my house this summer. My wife listed the house on Zillow and took nice looking pictures and put a good description. We also paid a real estate agent $300 to list our house in the MLS (and we would handle the rest of the sale). Once our listing was in the MLS Zillow brought in the crapified compressed JPEGs from the MLS feed and overwrote our description etc, and locked us out from further edits. Fail. Zillow is…

NAR is a strong lobby, they will fight tooth and nail to keep their position. Million + realtors are betting their livelihood on having a hold on buying and selling homes, and are not going to let that go easily.

Here is allegedly their letter to the president in 2011 (not related to Zillow but basically how they can throw their weight behind issues):

http://www.ksefocus.com/billdatabase/clientfiles/172/3/1359....

At some point perhaps they might strike a deal work together if they can't' see a way get rid of Zillow.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#68

Post by bgutierrez »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #49
alyx wrote: post #47

Anybody know of any good sources of MLS data for programmatic consumption (even if not free)?

I bet Zillow would love to know, too!

Yep. If it were easy to have the MLS data, they would have it. (Disclaimer: work for Trulia/Zillow on exactly this problem.)

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#69

Post by nkozyra »

staunch wrote: post #25

I lost all faith in Zillow when I realized their estimate was just a number based on their guess at a price per square foot times the square footage... A properties historical "Zestimate" changes if you update the current square footage. Whatajoke!

I somehow doubt it's that simplistic, though I imagine price/sqft is a heavy factor. And it should be, really. If you can find sales in the neighborhood and compute their price/sqft, there should be some relationship, modifiable by other features (pool, central air, etc.)

Case in point, my house's Zestimate comes out to $105/sqft, and my neighbor's comes in at $100/sqft. A neighbor without a pool's house comes in at $96/sqft. That would indicate that their "guess" is where the magic is - a price per square foot is computed based on factors that are not readily apparent.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#70

Post by imroot »

Getting and keeping real estate listings up to date is a big pain in the ass. There's no standardized residential listing data, and while you might get RETS feeds or data dumps from the MLS nightly, it's still on you to ensure that all of the information is parsed correctly and displayed in accordance to the MLS'es standards (or risk being cut off).

Often, MLSes have terms in their contract that say that regardless of the source, that their information must be the canonical source for information in some cities -- which is a huge problem with dealing with REO'ed (Real Estate Owned) properties and the banks that want to sell them.

I know of a startup that eventually just resorted to scraping realtor.com (and I'm sure that they're still doing it to this day) instead of dealing with the various headaches of managing the contracts with the MLSes and RETS providers.

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