First the news about a new organization set to try and take down Realtor.com, Trulia.com, and Zillow.com and replace them with syndication done REALTOR right. Or at the least to compel the syndicators to get the listings right.
Now my opinion. I think this is interesting. And I think it will get a LOT MORE INTERESTING if enough people join up to give them critical mass.
Did I mention that I would like things to get interesting? Or at least get fixed?
And for syndicators who want to hate on me for wanting things interesting… Fix the listings problem. Then gripe at me. Quit gaming the system. THEN let’s talk about the rest of it. 😉
If you want to dispute the WAV group’s survey linked in the news article…okayfine…but a LOT of us here in the real estate industry have a lot of empirical evidence that the study is true, namely people calling us about listings and us having to say “yeah that was sold a while ago.” That is a TON of empirical evidence that the WAV Group study is spot on.
Thoughts?
Mark says:
Not enough details yet about this group or how much this will cost met for me to make an informed decision. But I am like you and want things to get a LOT MORE INTERESTING.
October 13, 2012 — 11:25 am
Paul Francis says:
Take them down or create a 4th major listing site? Hmmm..
Zillow closed at $36 a share on Friday… up 44% year over year. Buy, Sell or short? Hmmm..
Why do we need big 3rd party sites nowadays when just about every agent has IDX on their personal sites or access to have it?
Can’t sell a house without them? That’s sad.
October 14, 2012 — 12:28 am
Judy Orr says:
I would love to see these deep pocket sites go away (that keep calling me to get my money to promote the listing they already have for free). My organic search is usually at #3, just below these sites but the first local website with the most accurate listing data.
How will another upstart portal knock down the well established sites? How will it truly benefit the rest of us? Nice idea, but I don’t see it.
October 15, 2012 — 2:18 pm
Diego Loya says:
I’m with you Eric. I like to keep things interesting. Hate, love or don’t care about the 3rd party syndication sites. They do give you something to talk about with your clients and give you a chance to prove yourself as an agent to a new prospect lead.
Be careful of what you ask for. Say if the zillow’s, Trulia’s realtor.com’s clean up and present accurate real hard data. What will that mean and do to your real estate business and marketing efforts.
October 15, 2012 — 2:45 pm
Alex Cortez says:
Sigh. The ZRT’s of the world will continue pitching what they misconceive to be their ‘value’ to consumers and agents will continue buying their advertising (whether it has merit or not, let’s leave that for a different thread). Sure, Spencer Rancoff can continue to tell us how wrong we are and that we just don’t understand – nevermind that WE (active agents) are getting calls about completely inaccurate information on ZRT’s sites. For me, I’d rather they all go away and be a bleep in the ass of RE history, but alas that is not to be.
October 22, 2012 — 12:50 am
Ray Smiley says:
That is really interesting but I would have to wait before I make any judgement on this. I would be curious on how much better it will actually be. It’s very ambitious but I applaud them for stepping out like that.
October 25, 2012 — 12:49 pm
Wayne says:
It will be interesting to see if they can gain the momentum to finish the project and it will be even more interesting to see the effect it has on the 3rd party guys…
Not sure it will help the Realtors either way…
October 26, 2012 — 3:46 am
david says:
Alot of this goes down to the way Google treats mega sites for SEO purposes. Zillow etc get lots of legitimate press releases etc. Also they get deals with serious newpaper sites that give them powerful links as part of it.
Zillow/appraisal sites also maintain constant pages for each property whereas a realtor IDX must take down nonactive/not display historicals. Another big IDX disadvantage.
I’d love to see a google real estate site and have google take out all the parasitical big aggregators.
As it is we’re just paying double for traffic generated through google.
November 4, 2012 — 8:00 am
Paul Caparas says:
It will be interesting what will happen to these sites. Misinforming the consumer is a big no no but they have been getting away with it. Please keep us updated Eric. Thanks.
November 15, 2012 — 12:46 pm