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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

#61

Post by zachanker »

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,…

I worked at Placester for a couple of years and built the system that imports data from real estate agencies. When I left last year, we had coverage with around 90% of the MLS's in the US. Most of what you say is right, but some clarifications and context:

You don't need to be a brokerage to get access to the MLS feed. Each MLS has their own policies for how you can display the data, what logos, size and text needs to be shown on the page with their listings though. Which means it unrealistic to build Zillow/Trulia site off of MLS data. Placester builds them for individual real estate agents which is significantly easier for keeping the MLS happy.

Some MLS's are great and will give you access to the data without much hassle, others are not and you have to pay a lot of money. Even once you get access, you will get almost no technical help or useful documentation on integrating with them. Since MLS's are almost never related, you still need to talk to 300+ different companies in order to get coverage of the US.

There is a standard that most MLS's follow for their data, which is called RETS [1]. I would say about 80% of MLS's use RETS, the problem with RETS is that it's a standard in the same sense that CSS was a standard 10 years ago. The original library I wrote for RETS [2] is open sourced, and is littered with examples [3], [4] and [5] (to name a few), of inconsistencies across RETS servers.

If you can work through all of that, you're golden. It took us about 1.5-2 years to get the experience of seeing how MLS's work in order to simplify the integration process down to 1-2 days, with RETS typically requiring no (or minimal) engineering work.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Estate_Transaction_Standar... [2] https://github.com/zanker/ruby-rets [3] https://github.com/zanker/ruby-rets/blob/master/lib/rets/htt... [4] https://github.com/zanker/ruby-rets/blob/master/lib/rets/htt... [5] https://github.com/zanker/ruby-rets/blob/master/lib/rets/htt...

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#62

Post by zachanker »

bsirkia wrote: post #56
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,…

Just out of curiosity, do you know how Craigslist sources it's real estate listings? Does it integrate with the MLS or do agents list there separately?

Real Estate agents post their own listings on Craigslist.

There are companies who provide the fancy HTML templates you see real estate agents use, but Craigslist doesn't allow automatic posting of listings.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#63

Post by fludlight »

LukeB_UK wrote: post #48

As someone from the UK, I've never heard of either of these sites. Kind of amazing that a business that's limited to one country can be worth so much.

Only when that one country has a GDP roughly the same size as the entire EU or ~6x that of the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#64

Post by cmdkeen »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
chaosphere2112 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting how the division works in other markets. In the UK people generally do their own negotiation, the tours are arranged by calling the seller's agent, the surveys are arranged to the standards of the mortgage company (and in Scotland, rolled into the "home report" at the seller's expense). Once you've selected a property you hire a conveyancer who handles title search and almost all the paperwork.

It's slightly different in Scotland further still. Here almost all estate agency is conducted by solicitors (lawyers). I've just bought a flat in Edinburgh and for a flat rate I had an experienced solicitor advising me on the process, giving me advice on each property I was considering - such as what to look for as warning signs when you're buying a 130 year old flat. Because they're lawyers they are regulated (which is why gazumping doesn't happen nearly as much in Scotland) so standards of client servicing are much higher.

The moral hazard is removed by them not taking a fee on the buy side, they're aiming on you continuing to use their services for all future legal matters.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#65

Post by tnorthcutt »

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,…

Why would you use a real estate agent trying to pump the price as high as possible

I was surprised to read this, since I thought you'd hinted at exactly the opposite by mentioning Freakonomics. Isn't the Freakonomics argument that an agent is incentivized to instead sell the property as quickly as possible, regardless of the sale price? For instance, accepting an offer that is $10k under the listing price will cost the seller $9,400 ($10,000 * 94%), but will only cost the selling agent $150 (1.5% * $10,000). If the agent's time is worth almost anything approaching a respectable hourly rate for a sales professional, then they should pressure the seller to take the lower offer, as not doing so would likely incur significant time costs (well over $150 worth of their time) for the listing agent.

Is that view of things mistaken?

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#66

Post by philfreo »

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,…

Thanks for sharing. Homebuying seems like it could still use lots of disruption.

> although they have coverage in most major metropolitan areas at this point

Sadly there's still a ton of major cities not covered :/ https://www.redfin.com/out-of-area-signup

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#67

Post by ensignavenger »

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…

About a year and a half ago I bought a home, after looking at dozens of houses. I found my home on Zillow, and I agree with your general sentiment about its strengths and weaknesses. In my case, my home had been on the market over a year so it had been on Zillow a long time, but I found a lot of homes that I wanted to look at on Zillow that were already sold or under contract and Zillow had not been updated for days.

I tried several agents before settling on one, and she was awesome helping my wife and I to tour dozens of homes during our search. Handling the actual negotiation/transaction was cake compared to the time and effort she put in taking us on house tours!

Of course, if the security problems could be solved, I would probably not have needed an agent for that :)

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#68

Post by caw »

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…

I'm also in the process of buying a home for the first time, and did some search on Trulia/Zillow. It was OK, but the data gets really stale. One home was sold already before it was taken down. I did find out that Houston has a really nice site, har.com that lets you do basically everything Trulia & Zillow does. Realtors have other interface(s) into the same data, which lets them do different things like N sided polygons instead of just squares for map searches.

Tours vs images is definitely an issue. Some people are just bad photographers, some only have 6 images (Houston MLS requires 6 images for a posting). Some are good photographers, that make things look bigger than in person.

Experience is hugely variable though. I called 2 agent offices, and got stuck with their most inexperienced Buyer's Agent. The more experienced people are doing sales of homes or commercial, and getting a cut of the commissions of the people under them. Some Googling led me to roughly a 60/40 split between agent & office, along with the agent paying a desk fee (~$50/monthly). Since the principal is still getting paid, you can involve them if needed for second opinions or more nuanced explanations. Agents are getting roughly 3% of the sales price.

Still read all your documents. I've caught things that slipped past my realtor, and also brought up questions for her to answer.

Inspections are a mixed bag. They have a preferred list, and should also provide you a legal document stating their incentives for any recommended providers (including home warranty companies). I ended up going with one of my realtor's preferred inspectors, but only after calling all 5 on their list, and several more listed on Yelp.

Knowledge goes back to experience. My agent was basically bowled over by 2 of the new home builders in the area. It was so bad I considered buying the Realtor's Residential Construction Certification program (1 day course, ~$300, they'll sell to anyone) and going through it myself if I went with new construction.

Another point about knowledge is that even with experience, you can come up with stuff they don't know. Neither my agent or the broker (my agent's boss) had worked with anyone that negotiated their lender origination fees. I got $500 off one lender and $1000 off another.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#69

Post by stephencanon »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
chaosphere2112 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting how the division works in other markets. In the UK people generally do their own negotiation, the tours are arranged by calling the seller's agent, the surveys are arranged to the standards of the mortgage company (and in Scotland, rolled into the "home report" at the seller's expense). Once you've selected a property you hire a conveyancer who handles title search and almost all the paperwork.

That’s almost exactly how the purchase of my house in the US worked. There’s definitely no requirement that a buyer use an agent.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#70

Post by roobeast »

jscheel wrote: post #15
NDizzle wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redfin, but they don't do anything outside of the big cities. (Redfin doesn't service my area, for example - while I used Trulia to look at the school boundary markers and occasionally to look at houses.) Zillow's site is crap compared to Trulia. Hopefully they acknowledge that and bring Zillow's data onto Trulia's stack.

I've had trouble with Trulia's image serving for the past several months. It seems like their images just take forever to load, to the point that I switched back to Zillow.

Can I ask where you are located generally and was this on mobile or desktop/laptop?
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