Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

dealbook.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 172 posts

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#161

Post by Zelphyr »

GreatHamster wrote: post #151
Zelphyr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should apologize[ ] and clarify; when I said, "they" I meant Zillow. I've been quite happy with Trulia and I'm honestly dismayed (or at least cautious) that the merger is happening simply because I'm worried the policies will lean towards the Zillow way of doing things rather than the Trulia way. Now that I re-read my original post I guess it does seem to lump Zillow and Trulia together too much. Again, my apologie…

Trulia guy/lady is right. Your assessment is pretty cynical, and inaccurate. Zillow has a higher volume of fraudulent listings because as of March, it had nearly 2x the market share of Trulia, and a whopping 14x that of Redfin. The listing quality teams work really hard to tear down scams as quickly as possible, but understand that as with any content flagged by users, your report enters a queue and has to be evaluat…

I only know what I experienced and that was having to email Zillow multiple times to point out the fraudulent posting. I even visited the property and spoke with the owner and even SHE contacted Zillow and requested a takedown of the listing. It was only after my repeated emails and posts to social media that the listing was taken down.

Maybe it was a fluke. But I don't trust Zillow.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#162

Post by mooreds »

jessriedel wrote: post #159
mooreds wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brokers (of all kinds) have been around for millenia and will be around for millenia more. There are always consumers who are willing to pay for expert advice and there are always sellers/producers who are willing to accept less than top dollar because they don't want the hassle of dealing with the consumer (which doesn't scale). I think that technology can empower the consumer, but doubt it can empower the consumer…

There are many other options. Here's a simple toy one, designed to eliminate the bad incentives discussed by freakonomics: Say you have a tiny house that could reasonably sell in the range $90k-$110k, depending on how hard the broker works. If you give the broker 5% of the sales price, then he gets $5k on average, but on the margins he only sees $50 for every $1k he can raise the price by negotiating. So instead, giv…

This is an interesting idea. I think it would be great for brokerages to publish that information as well.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#163

Post by red_hammer »

personZ wrote: post #137
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'll give some counterpoints given that so many others are supporting real-estate agents. 1) Real-estate agents make money on sales completing. Their primarily financial goal is to complete the sale. Whether this means that you are overpaying (or, for a seller's agent, are under-asking), or are buying a home that isn't right for you...that often matters less than simply closing the deal. 2) Never trust or take a reco…

> Never trust or take a recommendation for a home inspector or other service recommended by the agent.

I learned this first hand. I bought my first house in 2009, and used an inspector that my real estate agent recommended. The house was 25 years old at the time and he created a report full of minor issues, but no deal breakers.

I intended to live in that house for a long time, but had to sell it this spring. Got an offer in a month. All the minor things had been fixed and a I also made a lot of improvements. Then the buyers inspection found that a truss had been cut and removed in the attic by a bad HVAC guy. Ended up costing me > $1500 to have it assessed by a structural engineer and repaired, and almost caused the deal to fall through.

Once the missing truss was pointed out to me, it was very obvious, and should have been caught by an inspector on his first day. I'm positive he didn't point it out so as to not sink the deal and keep getting his referrals.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#164

Post by red_hammer »

rgovind wrote: post #58

All real estate news and websites are biased and always suggest you that buying a home is a god think. In the SF bay area, I hear real estate agents speak on the radio. Before recession, they said you should buy a home immediately so that rates may increase....Then during recession they say you should buy a home as rates have fallen to historic lows..for last 1-2 years, whenever you hear...they say the interest rates…

http://patrick.net/

Although I think he's overly pessimistic on housing.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#165

Post by zachanker »

adriand wrote: post #157
ngmaloney wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for all your work on ruby-rets! It works like a champ for pulling in listings from MLSPin and CCIAOR. As you mentioned, dealing with all the "certified" RETS vendors is a nightmare. For the uninitiated (and fortunate), RETS has its own querying language called DMQL which is inconsistent across versions and MLS vendors. Even trivial tasks like importing photos are handled with vast difference across MLS vendors…

Seconded! RETS is a goddamn nightmare. For years we've used librets and it's the worst. When we found your Ruby-only library we got it working with our feeds within the day and I can't tell you how relieved we are not have to deal with librets compilation.

Hah! Glad to hear some people got some use out of it. It was definitely a huge pain to work through all of that.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#166

Post by GreatHamster »

Zelphyr wrote: post #161
GreatHamster wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trulia guy/lady is right. Your assessment is pretty cynical, and inaccurate. Zillow has a higher volume of fraudulent listings because as of March, it had nearly 2x the market share of Trulia, and a whopping 14x that of Redfin. The listing quality teams work really hard to tear down scams as quickly as possible, but understand that as with any content flagged by users, your report enters a queue and has to be evaluat…

I only know what I experienced and that was having to email Zillow multiple times to point out the fraudulent posting. I even visited the property and spoke with the owner and even SHE contacted Zillow and requested a takedown of the listing. It was only after my repeated emails and posts to social media that the listing was taken down. Maybe it was a fluke. But I don't trust Zillow.

Have you ever submitted a fraud report to Facebook? It can take up to two weeks. You could also have called.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#167

Post by cookiecaper »

w4 wrote: post #154
roel_v wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, he was building a relationship, which reinforces the point that he doesn't care about saving a few minutes on a sale, and that he'd rather go out of his way to talk to me/us more than necessary, instead of trying to move his 'dollars per minute' needle up. Whether that's 'irrational' depends on your definition of 'irrational' - it surely is irrational from the point of view of pretty much every economic model o…

You can't apply engineer logic here, which seems like what you're trying to do. It's a sales and customer service business. By spending extra time with you his short term dollars per minute needle might be less than it could be (though this is debatable; he might just legitimately have the spare time, since you said it's a slow market), but his long term dollars per minute needle with do better because of the high le…

I think you're both saying the same thing -- he's just talking about how economist's models don't include this type of thought in their definitions of rationality because it's very difficult to quantify. Instead, they simplify down to money over time and pretend like that's the only valid formula for defining all behaviors.

This excludes more abstract, intangible elements of the exchange that are likely to lead to increased income down the road, but it also excludes behaviors that aren't geared toward maximizes income. It's totally possible that a person is behaving rationally with a different, more abstract goal in mind, prioritized above money over time, like building good friendships or having a flexible schedule. In fact, people make those kinds of tradeoffs where they explicitly prioritize an intangible, subjective quality of life measurement over raw income all the time, but economic models don't account for this.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#168

Post by Zelphyr »

GreatHamster wrote: post #166
Zelphyr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know what I experienced and that was having to email Zillow multiple times to point out the fraudulent posting. I even visited the property and spoke with the owner and even SHE contacted Zillow and requested a takedown of the listing. It was only after my repeated emails and posts to social media that the listing was taken down. Maybe it was a fluke. But I don't trust Zillow.

Have you ever submitted a fraud report to Facebook? It can take up to two weeks. You could also have called.

I don't really understand what Facebook has to do with this but in my experience, calling web sites--assuming you can even find a number to call--is generally a futile endeavor.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#169

Post by rahimnathwani »

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 analogy here would be trying to write a giant enterprise piece of software ... without the benefit of any experience as a developer

Where I'm from (the UK), people don't try to write giant enterprise software without any experience as a developer. They _do_ buy houses without a buyer's agent, and have done so for a long time, without problems.

There _are_ special functions which require the help of professionals:

- Conveyancing: actually executing the sale and ensuring ownership is transferred. This is dealt with between two lawyers, one on each side.

- Surveying: checking that the property is in sound condition and, if the property will be financed by a loan, appraising the value to ensure it's suitable security given the size of the loan.

Each of these services are provided by regulated professionals (solicitors in the first case, chartered surveyors in the second). Each are subject to a flat fee (i.e. not related to the sale price) which is the hundreds of pounds (not thousands).

I don't see how the US market is so structurally different (vs. the UK) that (i) the buyer needs an agent, and (ii) fees are so high.

Re: Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5B

#170

Post by roel_v »

cookiecaper wrote: post #167
w4 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't apply engineer logic here, which seems like what you're trying to do. It's a sales and customer service business. By spending extra time with you his short term dollars per minute needle might be less than it could be (though this is debatable; he might just legitimately have the spare time, since you said it's a slow market), but his long term dollars per minute needle with do better because of the high le…

I think you're both saying the same thing -- he's just talking about how economist's models don't include this type of thought in their definitions of rationality because it's very difficult to quantify. Instead, they simplify down to money over time and pretend like that's the only valid formula for defining all behaviors. This excludes more abstract, intangible elements of the exchange that are likely to lead to in…

Thanks, I didn't feel like typing all that, but that's exactly right.
Post reply on HN