My hypothesis of the next decade is, you are going to get your way. Think about stocks - once upon a time you went to a stock broker and relied on their experti

My hypothesis of the next decade is, you are going to get your way. Think about stocks - once upon a time you went to a stock broker and relied on their expertise in large part due to information asymmetry. Today, sure, some people go to a financial advisor who can assist with buying and selling financial assets, but for a whole lot of people, they go on Schwab or Fidelity and basically do it all themselves. That's where I see real estate mostly going - there will be a few large companies (probably Zillow among them) that will be your hub for house buying, with a few people choosing to still work with a dedicated human agent. There will still need to be some people involved physically, because houses are physical things, but Redfin (and others) have already shown that people are willing to get a real estate license, be paid a nominal salary, and have their only "real estate" activity be opening and locking doors on houses and handing over keys (IE: the physical things a web site can't do). My guess is at some point the players in this space will push for regulatory changes such that they won't even need someone to have a real estate license to do those things. Will real estate agents go the way of horse buggy whip makers? Probably not, but my gut tells me there will be fewer of us and we will have to move up the value chain.