Internet Real Estate Marketing Will Change the Industry
September 26, 2007 | 6 Comments
Check out this article in last week’s edition of the C-Ville Weekly regarding the Internet and its impact on the real estate industry.
In the article, I was quoted thusly:
Realtor and real estate blogger Daniel Rothamel says that while sellers listing their homes on MLS without a realtor do cut into some of the services he offers, marketing a house is just the first step. “Sure, now your house is marketed,” says Rothamel. “But now you’re also responsible for coordinating showings, doing the open houses and negotiating the contract. I think what you’ll see in the future is that the emphasis in real estate will start to shift towards representation, towards agency, as it becomes a lot easier to market property.”
I meant what I said, but I said a lot of other stuff as well that I would like to share here. I think Jim knows the feeling.
The internet has, in fact, made it much easier for people to advertise the sale of their home. It has made it so easy, and so much emphasis has been placed on advertising your home for sale on all the Web 2.0 outlets, that I think people may be forgetting that there is a lot more to successfully selling a home than simply advertising it.
One key component to selling a home, and I wish it would have made it into my C-Ville quote, is pricing a home. You can advertise a home in every outlet know to mankind, but if the price is wrong, it won’t sell. Professional knowledge and consultation with regard to pricing is one of the most valuable services that a REALTOR can offer. This is especially true in the Charlottesville real estate market, where reliable, timely comparable sales data is almost non-existent outside of the MLS.
While we advertise all of our listings in as many places as we can, Internet, print, TV, etc., that is not the only reason that our clients hire us. They hire us because of our knowledge and expertise in the field, and because of the advice and service we can offer them during the course of their transaction.
With all of the emphasis that is being placed on the ability to list a home for sale for free through so many outlets, I hope one of the side effects of this change will be that it will encourage REALTORS to improve upon the skills that make their services truly valuable. In the end, I believe the ease and proliferation of Internet real estate marketing will serve to enhance, not detract from, the value of true real estate professionals across the country.
[tags] real estate, realtor, charlottesville, virginia, c-ville weekly, internet marketing, real estate marketing, web 2.0, disintermediation [/tags]
Everyone Can Benefit from Real Estate Technology– Part 1
December 5, 2006 | 2 Comments
With the Web 2.0 movement changing real estate, there is much talk about disintermediation and transparency. Kevin Boer thinks that agents will never be disintermediated, and I happen to agree. Then there is an entire blog dedicated to transparency in real estate. Transparency is a good thing.
New technology affects just about every industry at some point, and sports officiating has been no different. While many in the officiating industry were initially very resistant to new technologies, the overall effect of these technologies has been mostly positive. In fact, technological advancements in officiating have served to actually enhance the standing and reputation of sports officials. The same could be true in real estate.
The technology that has had the greatest impact on sports officiating is instant replay. Instant replay is now part of professional basketball, football, ice hockey, tennis, and even NASCAR. The technology has made its way into college with at least football and basketball, and has even been used at the High School level in Minnesota for basketball and ice hockey championships.
As you might imagine, most officials were initially very resistant to allowing instant replay. Even to this day, there are those who feel that instant replay is bad for sports and for officials. While the merits of instant replay will always be debated, the actual effect of replay has been to make officials more accountable, and ro add a degree of transparency to officiating.
Accountability has increased because regardless of whether or not instant replay is used during the course of a game, video replay technology is used by officials to evaluate officials at every level. Video replay is a valuable tool for all officials because it allows them to see themselves on tape and review calls and plays at their leisure as many times as they would like. This type of review is impossible during the course of a game.
A common refrain among basketball officials is, “You better be able to beat the tape.” This means that when you make a call, you must not only be able to defend the call when questioned, but the videotape must show that you made the right call as well. When a mistake is on tape, there is no place to hide. Transparency is at its’ peak. College football experienced the potential negative consequences that can come with increased transparency earlier this year.
Transparency and accountability have positive consequences as well. At the professional level, video compilations are made specifically for officials so they can evaluate their own performance immediately after the game. In most major sports, video of the game is edited for the officials and they can download it for viewing on a laptop hours after the game has ended. This type of technology simply wasn’t available a decade ago.
The move to increased accountability and transparency through replay has made officiating better overall. Officials are now able to prevent mistakes by watching and analyzing game tape in much the same way that a team uses tape to prepare for a game. Officials have been able to use technology to their advantage in order to improve the way games are officiated. As a result, players, coaches and fans are able to benefit from the increase in the quality of officiating.
In my next post, I will explain how technology can increase accountability and transparency in real estate. Just as in officiating, everyone can benefit. . .
[tags] real estate, realtor, charlottesville, virginia, disintermediation, accountability, technology, web 2.0, instant replay, officiating [/tags]
Blogger For Frogger
October 8, 2006 | 1 Comment
I like video games. I grew up in the “Nintendo Generation.” I still like video games. It is for that reason that I own an Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 is the latest in a long line of video game consoles. It is the most powerful video game console that money can by- for now. You see, that is part of the problem. It is true, the Xbox 360 has taken video gaming to an entirely new level as far as graphics and sound performance is concerned. On the immediate horizon, however, is the next system, the Playstation 3, which promises to raise the bar on performance. So, before my Xbox 360 reaches its first birthday, something newer, and some might say better, will have already come along. This scenario is familiar to anyone who uses any type of computer technology on a daily basis. Innovation and advancement occurs at such a blistering pace that items like cell phones, computers, and televisions are often made obsolete before their owners even know it. The story of my Xbox 360, however, will still have a happy ending, at least for me.
You see, the one thing that Microsoft did that sets their console apart from the highly touted Playstation 3 is the development of Xbox Live and the Xbox Live Arcade. Xbox live is an entire online community of video game enthusiasts. It allows people to meet, communicate, and most importantly, challenge each other to online games. This is good for me, since when I do play against another human, it is my brother. Since he is at college in High Point, NC, Xbox Live gives us the opportunity to play against each other, and with the use of headsets, talk trash to as if we were sitting next to each other on the couch. Xbox live is certainly a feature of the Xbox that I enjoy. Nothing, however, compares to the enjoyment I get from the games in the Xbox Live Arcade, and that is where the Xbox takes a strange twist.
The Xbox Live Arcade is filled with games that users can download for about $7-$10 each. These games are simple, yet wildly addictive. One of my favorites, at least right now, is a game that most of you will recognize—Frogger. That’s right, that little green frog hopping through traffic and riding the logs has made its way onto my Xbox. Contrary to what you might think, with all the technological advancements in graphics, sound, and controls made over the last few decades, the Frogger on my Xbox 360 looks and feels exactly like the Frogger found in arcades and pizza joints throughout the 70’s and 80’s. If I am not mistaken, downloading Frogger cost me something like $7. I can tell you one thing for certain, I play that $7 Frogger more than I play all my other $55 Xbox 360 games combined. The same is true for many people that have ever visited the Xbox Live Arcade. Once you find a game in there, you are hooked. I have found myself staying awake far longer than I should just to try and get a higher score on Bejeweled, or blast just a few more triangles to smithereens on Geometry Wars. For all the high performance and unbelievable graphics the Xbox 360 can produce from games that took tens of millions of dollars to develop, I will continue to be a loyal Xbox 360 user because of simple games that took only thousands to develop.
In case you are thinking that my addiction to Frogger has nothing to do with the real estate industry, you are sorely mistaken. It has everything to do with the real estate industry. Our industry has undergone more technological advancement in the last decade than at any time in its history. On top of that, the technological advancements of the internet and Web 2.0 have pushed us even further since just the beginning of 2006. Things are developing at a rapid pace, and VC firms have poured millions of dollars into companies that promise to revolutionize the industry even more through use of technology and the internet.
The rapid technological innovation recently seen in the real estate industry is not unlike the innovation seen in the video game industry. The one thing that remains to be seen in real estate, however, is how it will all shake out. Sites like Zillow.com, Trulia.com, and Redfin.com are only in their infancy. Their impact on the industry remains to be felt. My feeling is that all of these companies can learn a little something from their neighbors at Microsoft. Sure, all the pretty graphics, Zestimates, heat maps, and instant access to information are cool and fun, but content is king. Once the newness wears off, and the innovation spreads to other sites, what will be left? How will they be able to set themselves apart from the competition, as Microsoft has done with their devilishly simple Xbox Live Arcade? In the end, people might enjoy the cool graphics and neat features, but what makes people stay, or spend, is information they can USE. When consumers start to search for informative content that they can really use, they will inevitably wander into the blogoshpere.
Blogs are to Web 2.0 as Xbox Live Arcade is to the Xbox 360. Blogs offer the consumer what he or she really wants, instant access to information that can truly help the consumer. On top of being easy to find, easy to understand, and occasionally enteraining, the information is broad enough that its usefulness never ceases. Someone can go to any one of the great real estate blogs that are out there, and find enough good information to make your head spin. This information is updated every day, and it never goes away, and its usefulness never expires. Just try this. Go to any of the blogs in my blog roll. Once there, go through the posts from a few months ago. I guarantee you that you will find something useful in those posts. Plug your favorite real estate search terms into any search engine, and a blog will probably come up in the results. Blogs have the potential to be the most powerful force in the Web 2.0 movement that is sweeping through real estate right now. It is true that most people may not be aware of the real estate blogs just yet, just as it took many gamers a while to find the Xbox Live Arcade, but once they do discover the blogs, there will be no turning back. The ability of blogs to give credibility to their authors and build loyalty amongst consumers is unmatchable. For all the talk of disintermediation that circulates around the real estate industry, the well-written and publicized real estate blog has the potential to turn the tide and firmly entrench the real estate agent as an expert and an invaluable consultant.
In one of my many favorite Seinfeld episodes, George Costanza attempts to orchestrate a hair-brained plan to preserve his high score on a Frogger game about to be extinguished. Playing Frogger evokes that type of devotion in people, and I have had the sore thumbs to prove it. Hopefully, the sore fingers brought about by my blogging will yield similar dividends in the age of increased technological advancement brought about by Web 2.0. If bloggers are smart enough, they can dodge the traffic of an unpredictable real estate market, and avoid the alligators of Web 2.0 that seek their disintermediation to enjoy the fruits of their labor safely on the other side of the stream.
[tags] real estate, realtor, charlottesville, web 2.0, disintermediation, frogger, xbox, xbox 360, trulia, zillow, redfin, blog, blogging [/tags]
Zillow VP/CFO Runs Smack Into the “Unzillowables”
September 25, 2006 | 2 Comments
This post recently came across my RSS reader. It is from the Zillow Blog, and written by Zillow’s VP of Marketing and Chief Financial Officer, Spencer Rascoff. The post tells us of Rascoff’s journey through 3 open houses in his area, all of which were homes found on Zillow. He doesn’t give us the data for the first two homes, other than to say that, "the Zesitmates were very close to the asking prices." He, instead, focuses on the story of the third house. It is at this home that he runs smack into some "unzillowables" According to Rascoff:
As soon as I walked in, I was taken aback by the stench. There was
no furniture, the carpets were stained and the house reeked. I quickly
figured out why this house was asking $710,000 when most houses in the neighborhood sell for $1M+.Anyway, the Realtor noticed me grimacing and then filled me in.
Apparently the homeowner is an elderly man who several months ago moved
into a nursing home. When the owner’s family hired this agent to sell
the house, the agent discovered a squatter had apparently broken into
the house and had been living there for several months. I should add
that my house is right around the corner and shares a fence with this
house. Also, several months ago my wife told me she saw a man hop the
fence and go into their backyard. I told her she was crazy and ignored
the event. (When will I learn?!) Anyway, the man — the squatter –
bolted when the agent entered the house that day. Several months and
many cans of aerosol later, the house is now on the market.
Talk about unzillowables! I’m pretty sure that the subject property’s Zestimate doesn’t mention any squatters. After viewing the home in person, Rascoff draws the following conclusion:
I will say this for the house: for someone with a limited sense of
smell and an appetite for a big-time remodel, it’s a bargain at $700K.
The house next door (which is in great condition) just sold for $1.4M, so I think this one could be fixed up for less than the $700K difference.
Out of sheer interest, I clicked on the "map comparable homes" link for the smelly subject property in question. Check out what I found. The homes that are comparable to the subject property, according to Zillow, are valued between $499K and $825K, with the average being around $690K. It would seem to me that the subject property isn’t such a deal at $710K. Why isn’t it such a deal? Because of the unzillowables! $710K seems fair when set against the comparable properties, but did those comparable properties also have issues with their overall condition, not to mention lack of security? The Zestimate for the subject property is $720,432. According to what Zillow’s own visual inspection of the property yielded, the sales price probably won’t be anywhere near that figure. That, my friends, is a quintessential example of the role that unzillowables play. Although, the owner is now free to log into Zillow and add the fact that the house has been shelter for a squatter for months. I wonder how that will affect the Zestimate?
And as far as Rascoff’s opinion that the home is a deal because of the sales price on the house next door, that house has over two times the square footage, 2 more bedrooms, and 1.75 more baths than the subject property. On top of that, Rascoff tells us that the house next door is in great condition, which obviously cannot be said for the subject property. I’m sure those aren’t the only differences in the properties.
I don’t want to sound like I am picking on Rascoff just for the sake of being facetious. I am not. I bring this up because the devil is in the unzillowables. I find it ironic that this time, the unzillowables are right in front of Zillow’s face, or nose, as the case may be.
Referees and REALTORS Explored
September 25, 2006 | 1 Comment
When I’m not practicing real estate, one of the things that I do is officiate basketball (I mentioned this once before). The letters from my officiating supervisors have been coming in, the rules clinics are coming up, and the season is on the horizon. All this got me thinking about the similarities between being a REALTOR and being a referee. Officiating has helped me tremendously when it comes to business, and vice versa. Here are some things I find similar about being a referee and being a REALTOR:
1) Referees adhere to a code of ethics, too.
2) For REALTORS, a well-managed transaction brings satisfaction. For the referee, it is the well-managed game.
3) REALTORS must build trust with their clients, referees must do the same with coaches and players.
4) Referees and REALTORS must possess and constantly improve upon their skills of interpersonal relations.
5) The technology of the Internet is changing the way REALTORS conduct business, Internet and video technology is changing the officiating landscape.
Those are five of the most glaring similarities I can think of. More on these and some others in future posts. I plan to expand on this relationship a little bit more, since The Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog is the only place where you can get this perspective on real estate.
Incidentally, since I know, or at least I hope, that all of you have lives outside of reading real estate blogs; and many of those lives include sports (at least as a fan), you can always email me with officiating questions. There aren’t a lot of good places for the public to learn about what goes on in the minds of officials, so if you ask, I’ll answer.
Would the Founding Fathers Have Founded an MLS?
September 20, 2006 | 1 Comment
I live just down the road from Jefferson’s Monticello, but I must admit that I have always been a bit more partial to James Madison
(The Federalist Papers rock!). Madison is credited with writing in Federalist #51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." I think that the same can be said of the MLS.
The purpose of my two recent posts about the MLS was not to advocate its demise. I think it needs some "customer friendly" improvements, but the MLS system has something going for it that other systems do not: ETHICS.
In some ways, I find myself to be a bit old-fashioned at my ripe old age of 25. I still think that oaths and pledges mean something. One requirement of being a REALTOR is that I pledge to abide by the REALTOR Code of Ethics. As a Virginia Real Estate Licensee, I pledge to abide by the applicable law in the Code of Virginia. This is important in that neither of these two pledges apply to the average homeowner or web developer.
The fact that MLS systems are run by REALTORS and agents means that the information is far more trustworthy than what a person can find anyplace else. REALTORS and agents are actually ethically and legally bound to present a fair and accurate picture of the home to the public. The same is not true of John or Jane Doe who want to sell their homes.
The much-talked about Zillow.com knows that it has a problem with accuracy of information, so it recently launched a feature that allows homeowners to post updated information about their home on the site. So instead of having inaccurate or incomplete information, we can now go to Zillow to get more complete, but potentially biased, information.
The information is posted by the homeowners, so there is a tremendous risk that the information will be biased towards a favorable "Zestimate" of the home. Homeowners are inherently biased in their opinions of their own homes. In fact, I would venture to say that some are even delusional about their homes. Not to mention the fact that some homeowners are unintentionally ignorant about some of the features of a home. I have gone into homes where the owner says that a particular area is
"finished" space, when that space has no climate control, or no flooring. It isn’t that the homeowner is deliberately trying to deceive me about the condition of the home, he just doesn’t realize that this space he has been using comfortably doesn’t meet the standard of "finished space." Now, imagine what happens when this homeowner has the ability to directly manage the information about his home.Those are just the average homeowners, that doesn’t even cover the unethical or malevolent ones that will inevitably try to take advantage of the freedom to change their home information at will. MLS systems have rules to prevent this from happening, and REALTORS and agents are legally and ethically prohibited from distorting the information that they offer. For all the shortcomings that MLS systems have when it comes to customer-friendliness, they are still better than a wide-open format that would be very vulnerable to misinformation and fraud.
Men are NOT angles, we all know that; and as flawed as the MLS system may be, it may be the best way to stem the rising tide of the less-than-angelic forces of Real Estate 2.0.
Isn’t Some Type of “Fin” Soup a Delicacy?
September 19, 2006 | Leave a Comment
The knives are out, and Redfin.com may end up in the soup.
Greg over at BloodhoundBlog posted an excellent recap of the latest row involving Redfin.com. If you’ve got the time, it is worth clicking on every word of the post.
The thing that I find funny about it is that Redfin.com is all about going to places like say, Congress, and complaining about unfair treatment in the marketplace. Now, they go and try to strong-arm a real estate blogger into bowing before them. Judging from the reaction across the blogosphere, which ranges from neutral to downright angry, it would appear that this one may come back to bite them.
Redfin has become a bona fide media darling, but authors in the blogosphere tend to be a bit more skeptical than the editorial staff of the New York Times.
It remains to be seen how Redfin will react, but if they do back off their current position, even for the time being, such an act would speak volumes for the cumulative power of the blogoshpere. But then again, shouldn’t Redfin already know this? What did they expect to happen?
I Want My MLS
August 18, 2006 | 3 Comments
I am going to show my age a bit, but that’s okay. MTV celebrated its 25th anniversary on August 1st of this year. I was about 8 months old at that time, not quite old enough to change the TV channels. I do, however, remember their first marketing slogan: I want my MTV!
Okay, so now you know that I am 25, and that I watch MTV. So what does this have to do with real estate? Good question.
I came across a post on the Inman News Blog regarding several Multiple Listing Services (MLS) around the country restricting the use of the terms "MLS" and "Multiple Listing Service." You can read an Inman story about the ensuing controversy in Minnesota here. This is a very sticky issue, and has a lot of different facets. The MLS owners are claiming that the rule change is being done to protect the public from websites that mislead consumers by implying that their sites are the actual MLS, or that the searches they provide are displaying all MLS data. Visit one of the sites in question and decide for yourself if you think it is misleading.
While the MLS claims this is being done to protect the public, I found a quote from a related Inman members-only article on the subject that seems to imply a different concern:
And Jack Johnson, CEO for Northwest MLS, said the MLS sought to clear up confusion over the use of the MLS term, and is also "concerned about the MLS becoming a public utility, and this is one thing we thought we could do to move away from that."
While this gentleman shares his name with one of the greatest boxers of all-time, it would appear this Jack Johnson is beating up on the consumer. The above quote seems to mean, at least to me, that his main concern is that the public is going to have too much access to the MLS; and that they would be using it as a research utility.
His comment raises the question, "Is the MLS for Realtors, or for the public?" I have always thought of the MLS as just one tool that Realtors use to serve the public. Remember the Zillow.com debate? One of its shortcomings is that the data isn’t as complete as it could be. The most complete data in many markets exists only in the MLS. This is most certainly true in the Charlottesville area. That is why I post my Charlottesville area real estate sales statistics from the CAAR MLS. Of course, the reason that I have to post them is because they are available only to members of the MLS. Is this a good thing? Maybe not.
If the consumers are the ones who are ultimately going to act on the data, then I think it stands to reason that consumers should have the greatest possible access to the data. That is why I post the statistics. I’ll give you another example. The CAAR MLS does not publish "days on market" for any listing on the public search. Only members of the MLS have access to the "days on market" for a property. It never fails, that every time I show a house, one of the first questions my clients ask is "how long has this been on the market?" Wouldn’t it make sense to give the public this information BEFORE they looked at the listing, since it is obviously very important to them? That would be true, if the MLS were designed to serve the public. The fact is, it isn’t. It is designed to serve Realtors.
The reason that the "days on market" isn’t made public is that many Realtors would literally have a stroke if the public knew how long some of their properties have been on the market simply by conducting an Internet search. The bottom line is that the public is going to get the information by asking a Realtor. I believe that it would make everyone’s life much easier if the public could have that information up front.
Their are other pieces of information that I think the public should have that they don’t, at least in our MLS, but I won’t cover all of them now. Instead, I will say that I believe that the only data in the MLS that the public shouldn’t have unfettered access to is personal information about the sellers, information about showing instructions, etc. Those things should be held only by Realtors, who are bound by both rules and the Realtor Code of Ethics. Other than that, I think that a lot of good could come from giving the public much more access to MLS listing data. Now that’s disintermediation. And no, I don’t think that doing so would put Realtors out of business, not the good ones, anyway. Maybe one of the positive side effects of increased MLS access for the public could even be the demise of Zillow.
As it stands right now, MLS systems and data exist purely for Realtors and members. The public is more of an afterthought. This will continue to be true, unless people start to stand up and say, "I WANT MY MLS!"
Zillow Must Not Succeed
August 16, 2006 | 1 Comment
As much as I dislike Zillow at its most basic level, the industry sure does talk about it a lot. Talk continues on, and I found two posts on other blogs that bring up two good points:
First, I read a post at The Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog that covers how Zillow could replace NAR. Very insightful, actually. Author Joel Burslem brings up the point that Zillow is simply ignoring their shortfalls and courting the mass media in order to prop-up its importance in the minds of the public. Obviously, the Zillow marketing machine is in full effect, and is effective as well.
Next, I read a post from fellow Charlottesville area real estate blogger, Jim Duncan, who raised the very important question, "what if Zillow is right?". Jim points out that if enough people buy into the viability of Zillow’s data and Zestimates, than Zillow will become the de facto standard for property values, regardless of the data. He also points out that perhaps evaluations of Zillow’s viability as a property valuation tool are a bit premature. Both excellent points.
Quite frankly, if Zillow is right, then I am very content to remain wrong. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but the following graphic from Zillow’s site bears repeating:
To me, this is appalling. If a customer were to call me and ask for a property valuation, or Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), and I responded by saying, "Sure, I can do that. I think you should know, however, that there is a 38% chance that I am going to be off by at least 10%," I would expect that person to hang up on me and find another Realtor. If I continued to do this with every customer with whom I came in contact, I would very quickly find myself looking for another profession.
The founders of Zillow.com, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, were also the founders of travel site, Expedia.com. Do you think Expedia.com would still exist if it told customers that sure, they can book a travel package on the site, but 38% of the time, we will tell you the wrong price of your trip by at least 10%? No, I think that customers would be up in arms and Expedia.com would be shut down in days. Of course, Zillow.com marches on.
To go back to a scenario I brought up before, if the market value of a home is $300,000, Zillow freely admits that there is a 38% chance that their "Zestimate" will be wrong by AT LEAST $30,000. If you think that isn’t a big deal, how would you feel if Realtors began to charge 10% to list a home. 10% is a lot of freakin’ money.
Of course, my scenario isn’t even complete, what I forgot to mention is that not only would I be giving people inaccurate CMA’s but I would be advertising to those people with claims that I actually COULD tell them their home’s value. That sounds a bit shady, if you ask me.
Perhaps you are wondering how Zillow manages to deal with their shortcomings. Simple, they force the user to do the work. If you visit the site and think the Zestimate is too low, you can then go and enter in the features of your home, find alternate comparable properties, etc. It would seem to me that Zillow should be the one factoring in those things. Isn’t that what people assume when they visit the site? And if that isn’t what people are assuming, then what is Zillow really doing other than aggregating public data, packaging it up in a pretty box, and giving the user a fairly arbitrary analysis of the data?
Zillow will never be right. It isn’t capable of being right. It can’t see properties, and even self-reported data on a subject property won’t help, because it doesn’t have equivalent data on comparable properties. This will ALWAYS be a shortcoming of Zillow. And it is just the most glaring on a very long list.
Assuming that will Zillow will never be right in the literal sense, that still leaves us with Jim Duncan’s scenario in which so many people rely upon it, that it becomes a de facto authority on property values. I imagine that this is theoretically possible. I mean, sure, there are a lot of stupid, gullible people in the world, and even some smart ones who suffer momentary lapses of judgment. If enough of these people buy into the Zillow lie, then I suppose Zillow could become authoritative. The people who would be held responsible for such a tragedy would be the hard-working real estate professionals who know better. It is our responsibility to educate the public about property valuations, and the danger that lurks behind Zillow. The only reason that Zillow will EVER become an legitimate authority is if real estate professionals sit idly by and let that occur. As for me, my mantra shall that of Greg Swann of the BloodhoundBlog:
Tell the world: zillow.com is bunk
Zillow Debate Rages On
August 16, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Zillow.com seems to be the discussion of the week around the real estate blogosphere. Lots of good posts out there. You can check some out by going to the Technorati content search, or the Technorati tag search. As the debate rages on, I think that the clear leader is The BloodhoundBlog.
I shall be jumping back into the fray momentarily. . .
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Disclaimer
My name is Daniel Rothamel. I am a licensed real estate agent in the Commonwealth of Virginia and a member of the National Association of REALTORS. As such, I adhere to a strict code of ethics and all laws with regard to equal housing, which is reflected in the content of this blog. My broker is Strong Team REALTORS, 86 Joshua Lane, Palmyra, VA 22963; (434) 589-5800. My VA Real Estate License number is 0225 077325. All of the opinions in this blog are mine, unless otherwise noted.
