Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Zillow growing and the Real Estate Sub-Prime Nightmare

Several other Real Estate start-ups have been announced since Zillow hit the scene, and it does make sense.

Innovating in a down market is simply the best time.

More people are looking for 'alternative' marketing. More are looking for exposure at a good price. Some are even discovering the newer real estate internet landscape for the first time.

When business is bad, the vendors (in this case, brokers) come to you.

Also, with less consumers in the market, it provides time to fine-tune your product. We didn't take the time today to find out who provides Zillow's Birds Eye View, but it is the ONLY map we've found on the Internet that shows the 6 new houses built around our PA home in the past 3 years.

As daily readers to this blog already know, we've run our own tests on Zillow. We have an agreement with our broker that allows either the broker or us to sell the house. Zillow was the ONLY site to check back with us by e-mail to see if the house had been sold.

Does this mean there's more than a few long-term, established real estate websites still showing houses that are off the market? Are they counting strictly on the MLS?

Even more news from Zillow today (less than a month after the ERA and RE/MAX agreements). They entered into significant agreements with numerous newspaper groups. The press release is here.

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