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In their Q4 earnings reports, Zillow laid out an impressive and visionary strategy that makes total sense for consumers and creates an enormous challenge to real estate brokers who are not taking the full cycle of homeownership seriously. Zillow calls this strategy the “housing super app.” To me, it looks like an exact copy of the strategy being deployed by Milestones.ai.
When Zillow Group® announced the acquisition of ShowingTime®, the industry began kicking up dust the same way they did after the DotLoop® deal.
If there is an emerging trend in broker websites today, it is collaborative search. TRIBUS had the functionality a decade ago, but really improved the product with a release announced this week called Households Collaborative Search; it is the beginning of home ownership portals. One spot for everything that includes all members of the household.
Wow! Yet MORE Big News coming out of Zillow today! They just announced they are buying Showingtime. So many MLSs and brokerages use Showingtime - there will be big implications with this one.
In the early days of listing syndication, WAV Group investigated the terms of use on third party advertising websites like Zillow.com®, Trulia.com® and others. Zillow® and Trulia®, who received data through listing syndication feeds rather than though data licensing terms with MLSs like Realtor.com® and Homes.com® had some shocking language.
In an announcement today – Zillow launched Zillow Homes, a licensed brokerage entity in Georgia and Arizona.
Trestle has a number of security features that MLSs prefer and MLS board of directors probably trust CoreLogic more than Zillow.
On July 4th in Atlanta, GA, a Fox 5 affiliate covered a story about the Hall County Sheriff’s Department warning potential home buyers and renters about scammers using actual listings and putting them under fake names on Zillow.
Zillow took a page out of Property Panorama’s playbook by using visualizations to create a 360-degree tour and stitching them together, which they call Zillow 3D Home – and claim it is a 3D tour.
I have been reading articles about Zillow Group’s positioning on Upstream and the forms licensing policy of the California Association of REALTORS® with great interest. My take away is that Zillow Group is doing and saying exactly what they should be doing and saying to positively impact Zillow’s market opportunities in real estate. Remember, Zillow has industry relations people and government relations people that want to fight tooth and nail for every advantage they can get. It’s business.
Real Estate is a fickle industry, cycling back and forth from favoring buyers to favoring sellers. It does not take an economist to develop a strategy for when to advertise for buyers and when not to. Certainly, real estate is in a condition of buyer saturation today. Brokers and agents who are advertising for buyers are mismanaging their advertising spend.
Since its early days, Zillow Group has maintained a position that the consumer interest is best served by allowing listings from all sources, including For Sale By Owner, to be posted to their site. This may be, in part, why Zillow sites had up to 187 Million unique users visit their sites last year. Recently, WAV Group has noticed a new type of broker support that is in line with this policy.
