In a commodity market (all goods are fungible) pricing is easy to come by. For idiosyncratic goods it’s harder to get someone to make you an offer. The traditio

In a commodity market (all goods are fungible) pricing is easy to come by. For idiosyncratic goods it’s harder to get someone to make you an offer. The traditional way of doing price discovery in those cases was an auction. Zillow was willing to give a price upfront with no commitment, even in the sense of face time with a charismatic salesperson. That’s valuable for the seller and dangerous for the buyer.