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Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

dealbook.nytimes.com

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Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#41

Post by andrewtbham »

IgorPartola wrote: post #32
rahimnathwani wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they provide a hugely invaluable service What is that service? I'm not being snarky; I'm genuinely curious, as the structure of the industry (and fee level) is significantly different than where I'm from. I don't get why you need a real estate agent to help you buy.

They know real estate the way most people do not. The analogy here would be trying to write a giant enterprise piece of software you plan on supporting for the next 10-30 years without the benefit of any experience as a developer. On a practical level, they can generally guide you through the very intense process of lining everything up to buy a property (this process takes months, and a whole lot of phone calls and…

The real estate agent is incentivized to make good suggestions because they work with the same people frequently and they want the house to close and get their check. However, the lending broker also has the same motivation and frequently is the one that handles all that stuff.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#42

Post by bhousel »

bane wrote: post #25
nilkn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct sources. Here in Houston, nobody uses Zillow because their data is not reliably up-to-date. The city has a custom solution: har.com. It's not as pretty, but it's what all the realtors in the city actually use.

Yeah, here in the D.C. area, nobody's using Zillow for much either since the "Zestimates" are pretty wildly off of actual market value and even in between homes in the same area. For example, it puts my house at about $50k under my next-door neighbor's house, despite my home being larger, with more upgrades (about $100k worth), with one more bedroom and an additional full bathroom. The identical house to mine, a bloc…

>So within, basically 2.5 blocks, in a cookie cutter suburb, we have almost $100k variance, with Zestimates at least $50k under market prices in some cases, and $50k over in others, and smaller homes Zestimating to be worth more than larger homes next door.

Zillow will only know what a house is worth when it is either sold or when you have it appraised and manually enter the details. I don't think any reasonable person would expect Zillow to know about improvements made (like work done inside a house or landscaping).

My neighbor just listed his house for a price that I thought was kind of high. He sold it within a day of holding an open house. My zestimate went up 2 days later.

I think Zillow actually works surprisingly well, for what it does.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#43

Post by beeskneecaps »

carlmcqueen wrote: post #24

A different article, which I'm having trouble tracing back now, mentioned that this acquisition is more like the same company owning match.com and tinder. Does anyone know if the intention to leave both up? article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-28/zillow-to-acquire-t... "Rascoff said in an interview that the deal to buy Trulia signals that Zillow is creating a portfolio of online real estate brands, which le…

Well they bought hotpads + several others and left them up in this same way. Acquire, put on back-burner, repeat. Not a bad strategy, I suppose.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#44

Post by andrewtbham »

chaosphere2112 wrote: post #37
rahimnathwani wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they provide a hugely invaluable service What is that service? I'm not being snarky; I'm genuinely curious, as the structure of the industry (and fee level) is significantly different than where I'm from. I don't get why you need a real estate agent to help you buy.

I'm in the process of buying my first home, and it's been hugely helpful to have an agent. Services include: - Tours of homes; seeing something online and seeing something in person is an impressive difference. Some houses look amazing online and terrible in person, or vice versa. Cannot possibly overstate the value of this. - Negotiation; he's a professional negotiator, and he has years of experience negotiating in…

The highest producing agents are indifferent negotiators, but work hard to convince you they got you a great deal. They are trying to get you to buy quickly. Every hour they spend showing you more houses dilutes their commission on an hourly basis. Plus if you think you got a great deal you will refer your friends.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#45

Post by hyperliner »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #22
IgorPartola wrote: post #12

Having bought real estate, I can say that Zillow/Trulia are both a blessing and a curse. They are great in that you can see what's been listed for a while, scan a map, and generally put a pretty interface on house searches. This I imagine is their great advantage. I also found my mortgage company through Zillow's mortgage rate search. Their big disadvantage is that their records are not updated as fast as the convent…

they provide a hugely invaluable service What is that service? I'm not being snarky; I'm genuinely curious, as the structure of the industry (and fee level) is significantly different than where I'm from. I don't get why you need a real estate agent to help you buy.

Some agents provide a hugely invaluable service.

If I am going to move to a new region, first I pick the area I prefer by renting a few months and learning the reality on the ground, then I grab the best agent based on specialization for that area, not a "generic" one for the whole city.

In my experience, the value of the agent is great there. But it lowers drastically if they are just "whole city agents."

Experience: moved to 3 metro areas in past 10 years.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#46

Post by moogoo »

chatmasta wrote: post #23

I interned for Redfin last summer. This is a really interesting space, and most people don't realize that Zillow/Trulia are operating drastically different businesses from Redfin. Some background: The US real estate industry is broken up into regions (e.g. SF bay area, Orange County, Lake Tahoe, etc.). In order for a brokerage [1] to operate in a region, it needs to employ agents specifically licensed in that region,…

Everything you said here is a damned lie

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#47

Post by mooreds »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #22
IgorPartola wrote: post #12

Having bought real estate, I can say that Zillow/Trulia are both a blessing and a curse. They are great in that you can see what's been listed for a while, scan a map, and generally put a pretty interface on house searches. This I imagine is their great advantage. I also found my mortgage company through Zillow's mortgage rate search. Their big disadvantage is that their records are not updated as fast as the convent…

they provide a hugely invaluable service What is that service? I'm not being snarky; I'm genuinely curious, as the structure of the industry (and fee level) is significantly different than where I'm from. I don't get why you need a real estate agent to help you buy.

Disclaimer: I work for a real estate brokerage (but I'm a software developer).

Real estate agents can help in a number of ways (chaossphere2112 outlines a number of them), but one of the easiest ways to think about it is that this is a very large, complex transaction that happens rarely. That means that, while you could learn all the ins and outs of: - contracts (often regulated by the state) - negotiation (in whatever kind of market you are in--one favoring buyers or sellers - house value (both use and resale) - what can be changed about a house easily (finishes) and what is hard (layout) and what is nearly impossible (location) - neighborhood characteristics - typical home uses for people in your shoes now and in two years and five years, which might impact your purchase - the minutiae of a purchase (deadlines, appraisals, inspections, etc)

you might want to consider paying someone who does this as their job to help you out.

As for the 'pumping up the price' to get paid more, or 'making me hurry up' to get paid faster, there may be some agents that do this, but good ones are more concerned about the lifetime value of a consumer, which can easily run into mid five figures (if you move every 7 years starting at 28 and ending at 70, and buy the median house price (~200k) and use the same agent every time at 3% commission, that is 36k in commission).

It's dumb to burn a customer for a few hundred bucks when their LTV is ~40k (if you pay 210k for a house when it is really worth 200k, the agent earns 6300 instead of 6000).

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#50

Post by epc »

Curious how this impacts Streeteasy, which Zillow just bought some time in the past year. Streeteasy is the defacto MLS (in a sense) for NYC (Manhattan doesn't have an MLS, nor does Brooklyn. Uncertain about Staten Island, Queens or Bronx).
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