“Stop Zillow”
stopzillow.com
stopzillow.com
If someone is willing to sell their home at a given price, what's the problem?
It's a transactional relationship that exists only as long as it benefits both parties, and there's no moral aspect to it.
"Realtors will lose millions in commission" is point #2. As if anyone other than Realtors would see that as a bad thing
I can understand if it causes homeowners to set unrealistic expectations regarding the value of their property, because, lets face it, there are a lot of "unsophisticated" home owners / buyers out there. Some of these homeowners / buyers make life decisions based upon bad information. Yes, they should know better, but many don't.
A home buyer / owner is looking for trusted authority for their property value. The only legitimate authority to make that determination is an appraiser. Zillow puts themselves forward as a trusted authority, which they definitely are not. The unsophisticated buyer / owner sees them as a way to avoid paying for an independent appraisal. But mistake.
Coincidentally, they're the most expensive agency and one of the most successful.
The most basic element of a sale is "what am I buying?". If a realtor cannot sufficiently answer that question through photographs and detailed descriptions, then said realtor has failed on a most basic level.
At the very least, a realtor who lacks the ability to take a good photograph ought to hire the services of someone who does (a.k.a. a photographer).
Shouldn't buying and selling a home today be a flat rate of $500 or $1000?
Furthermore, while many buyers may enjoy sites like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, and so forth, if you are buying in a new town/city or area you are unfamiliar with, relying on a local experienced agent can help a buyer avoid costly mistakes, or worse, end up over- (or under-) valuing property and missing a good deal or an opportunity they likely should have taken.
Buyers also may wish to avoid paperwork and other hassles that an agent will take care of for them. Is an agent still a pretty penny in terms of costs? Absolutely but people still do it, every day.
For a more sophisticated buyer with some time to devote to the process, they may not wish to use an agent in fact may not.
I seen no valid reason a flat rate of $500 to $1000 per sale is not reasonable.
So Zillow is free to act as an intermediary on whatever terms are acceptable to the parties involved. On the other hand, Zillow's ability to act as an intermediary is greatly enhanced by access to MLS data. So if the NAR pulled Zillow's access to the MLS, a buyer would have a much harder time searching for houses to buy without a realtor.
Zillow gets their data generally from the various MLS around the country and aggregate data with public records
You are pretty much describing what a realtor does in the US. Whether it's a person whose beautiful smile adorns every local paper, a discount broker prmising to "SELL YOUR HOUSE FOR 2% FLAT FEE, GUARANTEED" or an online broker like Redfin, they're all bundled under realtor umbrella.
But to answer your question, Craigslist FSBO, yard signs offering FSBO or even Zillow "Make Me Move" self-generated listings are all doable, they just don't bring in as many leads.
TLDR: Zillow is garbage, Realtors(tm) are generally bad at their jobs.
... but how many hours in a day, I wonder
Seems to me like the realtors are probably right, zillow is throwing their weight around to make more money, but realtors are very incentivized to fight back against zillow.
In short, right now only two investment firms are allowed to purchase homes using the instant feature. So basically a giant corporation buying up homes for cheap. Sux
[1] https://www.inman.com/2017/05/26/everything-you-need-to-know...
Edit: I ask because the populist-y invective on this site raises red flags for me, but I also don't know anything about this industry.
I sold my house for 750k. Today, months after the sale was recorded, the zestimate shows 657k.
I think buyers in competitive markets who rely on zillow will lose several times before they learn the market. I think sellers in competitive markets can just ignore it.
That said, I have never had good experiences with real estate agents. I didn't use one to sell 2 properties, and I havent used one when buying either (instead, asking to split 3% commission).
It's pretty good in subdivisions. Then again, anyone can figure that out.
"Instant offers" is the online equivalent of those "we buy houses" signs that you see in some areas. It's a borderline predatory practice and makes you question the real reasoning behind doing it. They probably built it for some real estate state investment pool that bought up distressed property during the recession.
I didn't see what the package was, but when I recently refinanced, the bank used software that understood neighborhood overlays and could find comps on similar properties. It also listed similar but excluded comps and the reason why. (Ie bigger/smaller yard, garage, dead end, proximity to 4+ family, etc) The only input required was a questionnaire from a drive-by condition evaluation.
That appraisal was within a $5k error bar compared to informal assessments that I had done independently with 3 real estate people.
Is this the MLS? Or is Zillow scraping realtor sites?
They typically paid for that access though I do know they were cut out of the Milwaukee one a while back.
I think they were scraping data at one point (but I could be entirely off-base there) At the end of the day, they are combing through public records, past sales from MLS and in many cases retyped/copied and pasted by the real estate agent.
when i was buying my place my realtor was sending me links from zillow, redfin, his MLS, his agency's private listings, even fucking craigslist, everything. he would send me stuff on weekends, after hours, even midnight. i culled the list down and he spent time setting up a viewing on every single one i asked for. the more listings the better, in his eyes. i referred him to 2 of my friends, both of whom bought places through him also.