If Zillow can solve the "problem" of putting all the docs (disclosures, inspections, offer docs, title docs later on, etc) up with the listing along with making a network of handymen (to help out with prettifying a house for sale), most buyers and sellers will be happy to pay them 0.5-1% instead of the seller having to pay the agents 4-5%. There's generally not a whole lot of work in buying or selling a house including agents doing events like open houses and helping with "discovery" and the buyer-seller matching problem. The offer process itself is also quite simple and can be done online. That said, the one benefit of an open house/tour hosted by a neutral party, is that it lets potential buyers easily assess a house without having a biased seller in attendance. This can also be managed and does not really require a real estate agent. Zillow and similar services like Trulia have a fantastic market opportunity in front of them.
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
#72Getting 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 o…
aren't they still at risk of displaying mls data in a non-canonical format?
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#73If Zillow can solve the "problem" of putting all the docs (disclosures, inspections, offer docs, title docs later on, etc) up with the listing along with making a network of handymen (to help out with prettifying a house for sale), most buyers and sellers will be happy to pay them 0.5-1% instead of the seller having to pay the agents 4-5%. There's generally not a whole lot of work in buying or selling a house includi…
This is all a great idea - but state laws wouldn't permit it (I work in the industry).
Most of the features you described, and the fee structure associated with them, would be in violation of real estate licensing laws. Hence why no one has provided a modern, competitive alternative to real estate brokers: you simply can't under the current regulatory regime. Otherwise, what you've described would almost certainly already exist.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#74Getting 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 o…
you gave me flashbacks thinking about "RETS", and how many times, it was a XML formatted CSV.
thankfully, someone else was managing the contracts, and we had built a fairly decent feed management system.
i still have nightmares, though.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#75Redfin is more accurate than zillow, They list new listings much faster and the interface is better. I'm in LA and redfin is superior.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#76Redfin is more accurate than zillow, They list new listings much faster and the interface is better. I'm in LA and redfin is superior.
Redfin is pretty different from Zillow, since they directly sell homes. So they will have better/faster listings directly from the MLS.
But they only have listings for the regions where they sell homes, so they have nothing for most of the United States.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you didn't provide any evidence, I agree with you. The housing market didn't "rebound" per se; investors soaked up all of the distressed inventory while previous owners fled to rentals. This masked the underlying fundamentals of the real estate market. In some markets (SF, Texas), you have a lot of foreign (read: Chinese) money flowing in fleeing less than favorable jurisdictions. That should hold prices up the…
I think xacaxulu was referring to Zillow, the company - not the housing market.
Ugh, I really need to not touch HN until I drink a cup of coffee in the morning.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#78When 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.
I think you're misinformed. They used to get listings via list hub. But their new owner Rupert Murdoch chose to freeze out Zillow. Now z has forged direct mls deals for most of the markets. I'm curious where you're looking that it's a ghost town?
Realtor.com has no leverage over anybody.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#79Redfin is more accurate than zillow, They list new listings much faster and the interface is better. I'm in LA and redfin is superior.
Redfin is pretty different from Zillow, since they directly sell homes. So they will have better/faster listings directly from the MLS. But they only have listings for the regions where they sell homes, so they have nothing for most of the United States.
Zillow has had direct mls feeds in most markets since the spring.
Edit: most markets by aggregate size. That is, they've signed the largest mls'.
Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap
#80When I was searching for a house I used 5 or so apps to do so. I found that Zillow had many, many listings that were very old, but were placed up top and the dates changed to make it look like it was just listed. However, checking the actual data for that listing shows that it was not pulled from the market and relisted, it was just Zillow constantly boosting really crappy houses that had been on the site for a long…
Another advice is to go drive around the neighborhood that you are targeting and find by-owner listings and such...