17 ms·

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

• pbreit 11y ago
  I like how they speculate that where Zillow has more listings that it could be because Zillow has database or data scrubbing problems and not the other way around.
  • Pinatubo 11y ago
    Realtor.com has access to the actual MLS, while Zillow does not.
• Simulacra 11y ago
  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 time. In short, trust none of them, use multiple services, and keep looking constnatly. I found my house through my agents MLS system, which was about the time it showed up on the aggregates.
  • ycitera 11y ago
    Another advice is to go drive around the neighborhood that you are targeting and find by-owner listings and such...
  • jpmattia 11y ago
    > 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.
    • zo1 11y ago
      >"make me wonder how much longer these dinosaurs are going to continue to operate the same way." As long as the regulations are in place that protect them from market competition and innovation.
    • _delirium 11y ago
      Do you mean the 2007-08 housing crash, or something else in 2005? If the 2008 one, it had a lot more to do with the financial side than the actual real-estate side, so changes in the real-estate sales process aren't likely to fix that problem. The "primary" dollar value involved in housing-price declines was significant but not really enough to cause an economy-destabilizing financial crisis. But the primary price declines in actual real-estate were multiplied many times over because the mortgages were all piled into heavily leveraged securities, priced based on risk models that turned out to be very inaccurate. That caused a crisis that ultimately involved dollar amounts greater than the total value of all the involved real estate. A loose analogy: if you buy stock with 100:1 leverage, and the stock price declines 10%, you lose 1000% of your original investment. The big problem here wasn't really the 10% decline in stock values (significant but not catastrophic), rather the fact that you had 100:1 leveraged exposure.
    • Simulacra 11y ago
      Very good point.
  • at-fates-hands 11y ago
    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.
    • Simulacra 11y ago
      My area (Atlanta) is a very hot market. I found my house on Cinco de Mayo, emailed my agent, and we were looking at it that afternoon. By 9 AM the next morning the owners had accepted our offer. The house had not been on the market 24 hours. If I had not jumped on that house the moment it hit The MLS system, I would not be sitting in the backyard enjoying it right now. :-)
• xacaxulu 11y ago
  It doesn't seem surprising that Zillow is pump-and-dumping in an already extremely bubbly market.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    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 there (as well as the other obvious reasons SF pricing will be held high; Texas is a new phenomenon). Other markets though are (in my opinion) being held up by extremely low mortgage rates (<4%), and as soon as the Fed starts their march upward, you're going to see home prices come down. This doesn't even begin to address Boomers who are going to want to downsize to unlock their equity for retirement, flooding the market.
    • uptown 11y ago
      I think xacaxulu was referring to Zillow, the company - not the housing market.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Ugh, I really need to not touch HN until I drink a cup of coffee in the morning.
• cwilkes 11y ago
  What annoys me about Zillow is that their "number of days on Zillow" is totally bogus. A house down the street was on the market for 2 months (at a highly inflated value). Time on Zillow? 2 weeks. Maybe the time on Zillow is based on repricing or taking it off the market and putting it back on? Either way if you were looking for homes unless you kept track of an individual house you wouldn't be any wiser. Also amusingly the house was a tear down, so the Zestimate was based on the old crappy house. Which I'm sure the builders loved -- it was half the price of the newly built home.
  • jonathankoren 11y ago
    Well you're not buying the house to be built. You're buying the land and the crappy house. By your logic, you'd be paying for the new house twice. Once you when you pay the builders, and again when you just throw money at the seller of the tear down.
    • cwilkes 11y ago
      What I meant was that the sellers of house didn't like potential buyers saying "Your house is only worth half of that according to Zillow" Of course this is an extreme example, I'm not sure how much people use Zestimates when negotiating the price of a house.
  • jonknee 11y ago
    It's also possible the Zillow listing didn't happen at the same time the home went on the market. It may have been on Realtor.com for 6 weeks before going onto Zillow.
  • Simulacra 11y ago
    I had this problem a lot. I really wish Zillow allowed you to block houses from your search, regardless of price changes, relistings, etc. I came across the same lot of sad, crappy, and overpriced homes over and over, because Zillow kept erroneously marking them as "just listed!"
    • 11y ago
• saidajigumi 11y ago
  Mods: the title of this HN post is not the title of the linked article, which at this writing is the somewhat less clickbaity "What Zillow Doesn’t Want You To Know". In fact, the c&d part, while important, could almost be seen as a distraction from the larger issues of MLS listing access discussed in the article.
  • sambe 11y ago
    What do you mean? The current title is factual, the actual title is clickbaity.
  • leroy_masochist 11y ago
    The title may be clickbaity but it's true, and it's the biggest takeaway I'd have gathered from the post had I found it through other means.
  • jonknee 11y ago
    I like the HN title better, "What Zillow Doesn’t Want You To Know" is the definition of click-bait (it doesn't let you know what they don't want you to know!).
  • Simulacra 11y ago
    True, this is true, and technically against the rules. Post Title and Article Title must agree. The poster must be popular or someone affiliated with the mods, else they would've had their posting rights revoked by now.
    • dang 11y ago
      > Post Title and Article Title must agree No, the rule is "Please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkabit." That "unless" is critical. I wish we had some linguistic superglue to keep the two clauses stuck together—they always fall apart in shipping and the first bit is the only one people remember. > The poster must be popular or someone affiliated with the mods, else they would've had their posting rights revoked by now. Don't assume omniscience! We miss things. Also, we don't revoke posting rights because of titles unless people break the rules a lot.
• rgbrgb 11y ago
  One point that this analysis misses is that there's often a significant delay between the time a property hits the market (lists on MLS) and the time it hits aggregators like Zillow [0]. If you're looking at week old listings in hot markets like LA and SF, then you're looking at a batch of inventory that has already been picked through by savvier buyers. For this reason, we always recommend that our buyers use a brokerage-quality data feed like ours [1] or Redfin's to monitor for new listings. If you have a reliable data feed and check what's new once a day, then you never miss out on the best properties -- much less stressful than clicking and re-clicking tiny icons on a map. [0]: http://www.inman.com/2014/02/14/los-angeles-claw-is-first-mls-in-the-country-to-delay-listing-syndication-feeds/ http://www.inman.com/2014/02/14/los-angeles-claw-is-first-ml... [1]: https://www.openlistings.com/setup https://www.openlistings.com/setup
  • matthewmcg 11y ago
    Right, in our market and for our home search, Redfin was as fast as the broker's feed and the other sites were delayed several days. We went under contract on our house after seeing it on Redfin and before the listing even showed up on Zillow.
  • acveilleux 11y ago
    That first link threw two interstitial ads at me back to back. The only thing more egregious they could have done would have been to make one of them an auto-play video.
  • debacle 11y ago
    Truth be told, if you're looking at day old listings on the MLS you're looking at a batch of inventory that has already been picked through by savvier buyers.
    • rgbrgb 11y ago
      Sure, but typically offers have 3 day expirations so you'll still have a window to go see the home and get an offer in if you like it. That said, the advice stands even if you're checking more than once a day -- only look at the new stuff (sort by listing date), and don't stress :).
• MikeKusold 11y ago
  When 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.
  • ohitsdom 11y ago
    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.
    • sharkweek 11y ago
      Redfin is a brokerage and thus has full access to the MLS. I'm not sure anyone can shut off Redfin's access so easily because of this?
      • ohitsdom 11y ago
        Ah good info, thanks.
      • llimllib 11y ago
        Which is also why they have very spotty coverage; if they're not a licensed broker in your area, they have zero listings.
        • xenophon 11y ago
          To be precise on this: Redfin covers 75+ metro markets and the vast majority of the United States by population. "Spotty" is fairly inaccurate if your intent is to describe the % of the population that can use Redfin to find a home. (I work at Redfin).
          • thisone 11y ago
• pbreit 11y ago
  I like how they speculate that where Zillow has more listings that it could be because Zillow has database or data scrubbing problems and not the other way around.
• patja 11y ago
  Looking at the C&D letter, it seems that Zillow is saying any use of their site for commercial use is prohibited. Wouldn't that cover traditional print journalists doing a similar story, or any story that made use of information gleaned from Zillow? Why didn't Bloomberg receive a C&D for this story which says "Bloomberg used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Group Inc. and Bankrate.com to quantify how much more money millennials would need to earn each year to afford a home in the largest U.S. cities." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/these-are-the-13-cities-where-millennials-can-t-afford-a-home http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/these-are-... I guess nobody except the EFF really wants to take on this type of fight.
  • declan 11y ago
    [a] Journalists using Zillow's site would likely be viewed as personal or editorial use, not commercial use. [b] Bloomberg probably worked with Zillow. [c] I'm not sure EFF would be interested in this. It's pretty standard TOS language, and when EFF did get involved in the Craigslist/Padmapper case, it was (correctly) interested in stomping on idiotic CFAA theories of liability and the exclusive license point. If Zillow tried to strongarm journalists, that would be a different story, but they have not done so as far as I know. Background: I was a journalist before founding https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ and would often get approached by companies like Zillow to write about what their data showed.
• ohitsdom 11y ago
  > So as not to violate Zillow.com’s terms of service we have done so manually (hence the limited number of cities). Can sites have a legally enforceable terms of service that ban automated access? I understand if the automated traffic is high and impacts server performance and cost, but they can ban it even if it's limited? I understand sites need to protect their servers, but if it's publicly accessible and the traffic is reasonable, I'm surprised it's legally enforceable to ban it. And as shown by this blog post, it still can be done manually so the ban isn't very effective.
  • tyre 11y ago
    Yes. Sites can ban traffic for any reason they choose. You're using their servers and they have the right to determine how those servers are accessed. They don't need a specific "right" to control their servers. Likewise, users on the internet have no "right" to access anything.
    • paulgb 11y ago
      > Likewise, users on the internet have no "right" to access anything Yes, they have a right to block you, but that doesn't imply that a terms of service which prohibits automated access is legally enforceable. A TOS is not a contract so you can't put whatever you want in there and expect a court to honor it. To my knowledge US courts have not decided ohitsdom's question, but I could be wrong. However, if the site makes an attempt to block you from automatic access (even an IP block) and you circumvent it, you're in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. See Craigslist v. 3Taps. (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer)
      • ohitsdom 11y ago
        Thank you, this is the type of info I was looking for.
    • jrochkind1 11y ago
      I'm not sure sites can sue journalists for investigating them. Or rather, I don't think they will win. In the U.S., anyone can file a suit against anyone, merited or not, of course. Sometimes in cases like this defendents can get damages from plaintifs under anti-SLAPP laws. But it's still gonna be a long road to get there, if your opponent has the bucks for it and you don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
• staunch 11y ago
  I lost all faith in Zillow when I realized their estimate was just a number based on their guess at a price per square foot times the square footage... A properties historical "Zestimate" changes if you update the current square footage. Whatajoke!
  • nkozyra 11y ago
    I somehow doubt it's that simplistic, though I imagine price/sqft is a heavy factor. And it should be, really. If you can find sales in the neighborhood and compute their price/sqft, there should be some relationship, modifiable by other features (pool, central air, etc.) Case in point, my house's Zestimate comes out to $105/sqft, and my neighbor's comes in at $100/sqft. A neighbor without a pool's house comes in at $96/sqft. That would indicate that their "guess" is where the magic is - a price per square foot is computed based on factors that are not readily apparent.
  • encoderer 11y ago
    It's most certainly not that simple. Valuation models have been around a long time and none are that simple. Perhaps it considers updates to be corrections to incorrect data. In which case recalculating the history seems reasonable to me
• justinzollars 11y ago
  As a recent home buyer, I found Zillow information to be at least one week out of date. In most cities, that probably isn't a big deal; however in the San Francisco Bay area I found the site pretty useless because all of the homes I was interested in, I was unable to see because they were usually off the market, pending or very late in the process where I was unable to visit the home. I ended up using a Sotheby's owned site, with accurate data. Additionally, their Zillow Estimate information is at least 20% low in SF, even by admission of their own analysis: http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc The benefit I should mention is that I met a great Realtor through their ads, which he admitted to spending thousands of dollars on per month on.
  • beambot 11y ago
    To be fair... in a lot of SFBA locales, homes are selling for 20% over list anyway. So even sellers (and agents) are having a hard time pricing the demand.
    • justinzollars 11y ago
      my realtor was able to estimate the price better than Zillow, I feel like they need a better machine learning model to accommodate different markets. (Denver, SF and Ohio are very different places)
      • jrochkind1 11y ago
        In my recent long home search period, I didn't trust Zillow's price estimates at all. But i used Zillow religiously because it's UI/UX is just so good, so much better than the competition, I could do a survey of what's out there easier and quicker, and find out more of what I wanted to know about interesting listings. Zillow "zestimate" seems to be something they're known for, but I don't think it's actually their strength as a product.
    • batbomb 11y ago
      Realtors are often encouraging sellers to list below market rate to encourage bidding wars. When you have to go through several of these before you can get into a house, it causes quite a frenzy in people. This isn't the norm across the country. In other markets, realtors usually have clients list houses above market value with the expectation the sellers will come down.
• kelukelugames 11y ago
  Redfin is not even listed. Snubbed.
  • blue11 11y ago
    Personally, I've always found Redfin so much better than Zillow in the areas that are covered by Redfin (better data, better UI, overall better user experience). Having lived only in such areas for more than 10 years, I was surprised a few years ago to discover that Zillow was the industry leader.
• jasode 11y ago
  FYI: To add some color to the article, here's more information about the different relationships of MLS with Zillow and Redfin from a former Redfin intern (posted July 28, 2014): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8096912
  • arenaninja 11y ago
    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
    • CodyReichert 11y ago
      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 (after all, getting them directly from the MLS is the best source you'll get). Zillow, on the other hand, has an agreement with some MLS's, but for the most part they rely on alternative methods of getting listing data. The only reason that have any (IMO) is because they have consumers looking for property there - which gives the Realtor incentive to upload/update their listings. So as everyone else is saying, Zillow can fall out of date - whereas Redfin can actually get penalized for being out of date.
      • encoderer 11y ago
        Actually the vast majority of their listings come from direct mls. I'm not sure if this includes the Houston mls.
• alyx 11y ago
  Anybody know of any good sources of MLS data for programmatic consumption (even if not free)?
  • JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    I bet Zillow would love to know, too!
    • bgutierrez 11y ago
      Yep. If it were easy to have the MLS data, they would have it. (Disclaimer: work for Trulia/Zillow on exactly this problem.)
  • troisx 11y ago
    You could try Listhub, but they charge. Any other source would most likely not be legally obtained.
    • imroot 11y ago
      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.
      • icebraining 11y ago
        I'm curious, did you look into streaming XML parsing, StAX-style? It's not hard to process infinitely-long files with constant memory: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9809469/python-sax-to-lxml-for-80gb-xml/9814580#9814580 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9809469/python-sax-to-lxm...
  • CodyReichert 11y ago
• debacle 11y ago
  The MLS system is a disaster. Think Alien 2 levels of mucousy, dark and dank ventilation shafts. Zillow has never not worked really well for all of my uses (shopping, price checking, looking at neighborhoods, etc), and it's done so in a way that no other realty website ever has. The reality is that realtors have a huge vested interest in making it more difficult to shop for a house and generally rely on information asymmetry in a massive way. Zillow is a massive blow to that barrier and I hope they succeed. Disclaimer: I've worked for a handful of realtors and with several MLS systems in the past.
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  The article's conclusion left me feeling kinda meh. The article made me feel like it was leading up to something and then "... is destined for an uphill battle.". Well, yeah? Anytime you base your business on someone else's data, you run the risk of the carpet getting yanked out from underneath you.
• meritt 11y ago
  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=925723 http://investors.zillowgroup.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID... The sampling methods used by the author are extremely poor. Miami, FL on Zillow.com and Realtor.com are substantially different areas. Just do a search yourself and look at the map. Realtor appears to be using the metro while Zillow's site defaults to "Miami" only. They need to extract 100% inventory and use exactly the same geofenced boundaries if you want actual 1:1 comparison. Their conclusion may very well be correct but the data sure as hell does not support it. If you want to criticize Zillow, there are far easier methods than this one. How about that Trulia acquired MarketLeader for $355M (Apr 13), Zillow acquired Trulia for $2.5B (Feb 15), and Zillow just sold MarketLeader for $23M. How much of Trulia's $2.5B pricetag was in recognition of Market Leader's "value"? I'm guessing we'll see at least $200-250M or so drop from Zillow's goodwill ($1.8B as of 6/30/15) on their balance sheet for Q3-15.
  • smackfu 11y ago
    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.
    • uxp 11y ago
      I bought a house in Salt Lake City in June. Zillow (and Trulia, etc.) have piss-poor integration in this market, which left our house marked available for weeks after our closing date. I had to chase someone away who was snooping around my back yard 6 weeks after moving in because they thought the home was unoccupied (we hadn't moved in because I was remodeling parts of the basement). They may provide a better UI than the abysmal MLS sites your agent recommends, but they don't do much more in (as the article suggests) the +60% of markets they don't have listing contracts with.
    • ramenmeal 11y ago
• bcg1 11y ago
  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 going about this all wrong... their advantage is that they aren't the MLS system, they are the best positioned to be an alternative to the NAR cartel. If anything THEY should have agents in every town who will put your house into the MLS for you for $300, as well as allow enhanced listing on their site at the same time... they might actually make some money that way, and also it would solve their MLS problem. Instead they seem to want to beg the cartel for a seat at the table. Pretty sad.
  • gdubs 11y ago
    In the end, do you know whether Zillow or the MLS listing led to the sale?
  • rdtsc 11y ago
    NAR is a strong lobby, they will fight tooth and nail to keep their position. Million + realtors are betting their livelihood on having a hold on buying and selling homes, and are not going to let that go easily. Here is allegedly their letter to the president in 2011 (not related to Zillow but basically how they can throw their weight behind issues): http://www.ksefocus.com/billdatabase/clientfiles/172/3/1359.pdf http://www.ksefocus.com/billdatabase/clientfiles/172/3/1359.... At some point perhaps they might strike a deal work together if they can't' see a way get rid of Zillow.
    • aggieben 11y ago
      There will never be a deal. NAR's prosperity absolutely depends on their exclusive control of market access. Professional licensing is the single reason why this market sucks donkey balls. This is also why I would heartily support a total deregulation of real-estate-related professional licensing. It simply isn't that complex a task, and it doesn't really require much training to be competent at most transactions - and particularly the one kind of transaction you want to do. Anyone and everyone should be legally allowed to represent someone in selling or buying real estate. In that world, the NAR continues to exist as a sort of "credibility certification", which I would fully support. But they shouldn't get to use the government to keep competitors out.
• imroot 11y ago
  Getting 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 of the source, that their information must be the canonical source for information in some cities -- which is a huge problem with dealing with REO'ed (Real Estate Owned) properties and the banks that want to sell them. I know of a startup that eventually just resorted to scraping realtor.com (and I'm sure that they're still doing it to this day) instead of dealing with the various headaches of managing the contracts with the MLSes and RETS providers.
  • lfender6445 11y ago
    aren't they still at risk of displaying mls data in a non-canonical format?
    • uxp 11y ago
      If they're scraping the site, then I'd assume they backed out of their contract for the MLS dumps and thus don't have a contract that says they have to display data in any format.
  • jerrysievert 11y ago
    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.
  • stephengillie 11y ago
    It's a nightmare. I used to work for one of the industry dinosaurs; they have an MLS team that was as large as their development team. They pull data from over 600 MLSes, with different requirements for each. Managing 600 business contacts is a big pain, then there are different data conventions that change without notice. They have had a long-standing arrangement to feed data to Trulia too. The word is most MLSes use CDNs, so scraping might not be the best way.
• gshx 11y ago
  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.
  • w4 11y ago
    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.
    • jpmattia 11y ago
      > 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.
      • w4 11y ago
        > Uber, AirBnB redux. Provide a service that people want more than one built on cronyism-type relations between entrenched industry and gov't Not trying to be a debby-downer here (I'd love to see innovation in the industry), but this would almost certainly get stomped on before it could ever reach critical mass. Uber and Airbnb were able to exploit loopholes in existing regulations, and move quicker than the disconnected, regionally focused incumbents. By the time the incumbents (taxi companies, hotels) caught on, they were left flat footed. The real estate industry in the United States is a very different situation. The incumbent interests are tightly organized and politically active on a national level. The National Association of Realtors was the third largest spender on lobbying in the USA last year. The only groups that outspent them were the US Chamber of Commerce, and the American Medical Association: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000062 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000062 As a result, the regulatory framework in most states highly restrictive and robust. There are few, if any, loopholes to exploit, since the NAR lobbies heavily on a state-by-state basis for uniform, restrictive regulations: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112381069428011613 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112381069428011613
• nickgrosvenor 11y ago
  Redfin is more accurate than zillow, They list new listings much faster and the interface is better. I'm in LA and redfin is superior.
  • rhc2104 11y ago
    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.
    • encoderer 11y ago
      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'.
    • Bartkusa 11y ago
      Most Americans currently live in areas served by Redfin. Most of the US is very sparsely populated, so I don't think that's a good measure of coverage. Rural areas and smaller cities deserve service, too, but that'll come with time. (I'm currently employed by Redfin.)
• ryanSrich 11y ago
  Semi related. In Portland every single house on Zillow was actually already sold. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but it was very annoying. The only app that would show houses that were actually still on the market was Redfin. Has anyone else in a different area experienced this?
• cyrillevincey 11y ago
  Post deleted upon Zillow's request?
• borkabrak 11y ago
  ..aand it's gone. I just got: "–This post has been temporarily removed at the request of Zillow. We are collaborating with them to write a more complete version of the story, and will have an updated version posted on October 7th.–" Nothing creepy about that. Certainly doesn't leave me feeling that whatever it is the article said about Zillow apparently hit them pretty close to home.
  • jbb555 11y ago
    Yeah this has made me MUCH more interested in what the article said.
  • zaius 11y ago
    Archive.org has the original (for the time being) - https://web.archive.org/web/20151006173818/https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/zillow-realtor-listing-war https://web.archive.org/web/20151006173818/https://www.build...
    • inanutshellus 11y ago
      Looks like it has even been taken down from Archive.org!
• deraker 11y ago
  Looks like this article has been taken down by the authors now due to a cease and desist: http://www.inman.com/2015/10/06/buildzoom-calls-zillow-out-for-alleged-data-quality-issues/ http://www.inman.com/2015/10/06/buildzoom-calls-zillow-out-f... Article is gone from original source too... Obviously nothing to see here folks ;)
• elec3647 11y ago
  Article was taken down. Does anyone have it archived/alternative link?