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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

#81

Post by jpmattia »

w4 wrote: post #73
gshx wrote: post #71

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 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 al…

> This is all a great idea - but state laws wouldn't permit it (I work in the industry).

Uber, AirBnB redux. Provide a service that people want more than one built on cronyism-type relations between entrenched industry and gov't, and the change happens even with the existing law base.

It's not like it's some secret as to how the laws got there in the first place.

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

#82

Post by JoshTriplett »

w4 wrote: post #73
gshx wrote: post #71

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 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 al…

Depends on the local regulations, but yes, real estate has gone through quite a bit of regulatory capture. Might be possible to do an end-run via the same mechanisms that allow "for sale by owner".

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

#83

Post by toomuchtodo »

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…

You just listed all the reasons Redfin (https://www.redfin.com) is killing it. Their value proposition is that their agents aren't paid on commission, they're paid on your satisfaction. Their website is also very data-intensive compared to MLS sites (which create information asymmetry between buyers, sellers, and brokers due to how they're setup).

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

#84

Post by smackfu »

meritt wrote: post #55

Zillow has substantially mitigated the loss of Move.com/Realtor.com by forging direct relationships with numerous MLSs since the cutoff in April. > Since January, more than 300 MLSs have signed agreements to send listings directly to Zillow and Trulia, providing their members access to the largest audience of home shoppers on mobile and Web 1. http://investors.zillowgroup.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID... The sampli…

The problem is that if the MLS that covers your area didn't make a deal with Zillow, the overall stats don't really matter. Zillow will be useless for house shopping.

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

#85

Post by jpmattia »

Simulacra wrote: post #18

When 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…

> In short, trust none of them

To amplify: I don't think it's any accident that the 2005 housing fiasco happened in this industry. Terrible pricing information (gaps + timeliness), as well as terrible conflicts of interest (buyers brokers are incentivitized to make the buyer pay as much as possible) make me wonder how much longer these dinosaurs are going to continue to operate the same way.

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

#86

Post by imroot »

troisx wrote: post #54
alyx wrote: post #47

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

You could try Listhub, but they charge. Any other source would most likely not be legally obtained.

Listhub has its own problems -- specifically when MLS'es update data, Listhub has to ensure that all of the applications that use its data are updating their information as well. Listhub is also one HUGE xml file that is a pain in the ass to process. (We explored with a python based parser that chunked the file up into smaller listings and then imported that into Elasticsearch; but ultimately gave up and resorted into a C based parser that threw everything into MongoDB.

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

#87

Post by rgbrgb »

w4 wrote: post #73
gshx wrote: post #71

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 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 al…

In most places there's no real estate licensing law against the fee structure in question as long as they registered as a brokerage [0]. As an agent you can discount your fee as much as you want. At Open Listings we're actually operating a very similar deep discount model in California -- you find the home, make an offer on our site [1], then we have a digitally-enhanced agent team for advice, negotiation, and managing the close. The premise is that all of these great listing apps make house hunting (most of the work) accessible to non-Realtors but there's still some useful expertise we can provide in closing the deal, representing our buyer's interests, and making sure all the paperwork is in order.

Update: added sources

[0]: http://www.justice.gov/atr/rebates-make-buying-home-less-exp... [1]: https://www.openlistings.com/offers/new

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

#88

Post by encoderer »

CodyReichert wrote: post #60
arenaninja wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very interesting read. So that means that in my market (Houston, TX), Redfin actually has all the listings? I wasn't aware of that. har.com usually has 100% coverage and some nifty features, but the mobile app is pretty awful

In a very simplified nutshell - yes. HAR is the MLS in Houston, and Redfin is a brokerage in Houston. That allows Redfin to sign an agreement with HAR to access their listing data and show it publicly. HAR will have 100% of listings from participating brokerages (non-participating brokers are a very, very small percentage). Now, as long as Redfin follows some rules they'll have no problem keeping up to date listings…

Actually the vast majority of their listings come from direct mls. I'm not sure if this includes the Houston mls.

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

#89

Post by at-fates-hands »

Simulacra wrote: post #18

When 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…

I had the same problem this summer.

I was working with an agent and I told him I saw several houses I wanted to look at on Zillow. Sent him the list and all but one was sold. He said the listings were in some cases as much as 6 months old.

After that, he just plugged me into the MLS listings directly and then every time a new house would show up, I'd know about it and could email him if I wanted to see it or not.

I totally agree about not trusting 3rd party apps. MLS, unfortunately is the only reliable source I know of.

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

#90

Post by encoderer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #83
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…

You just listed all the reasons Redfin ( https://www.redfin.com ) is killing it. Their value proposition is that their agents aren't paid on commission, they're paid on your satisfaction. Their website is also very data-intensive compared to MLS sites (which create information asymmetry between buyers, sellers, and brokers due to how they're setup).

Otoh, are the very best agents going to work for rf and make less money? Redfin looks like modern KW to me. Most great agents don't want to undersell their own industry. And while there are many markets where a mediocre agent will do, I wouldn't take that chance in sf, la, Nyc, Miami, etc
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