Zillow.com news: Broker listing feeds “coming soon,” a lender opportunity and no news is not good news in Arizona
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Thursday, June 14th, 2007, 12:34 pm MST
Category: Disintermediation, Marketing, Real Estate, Technology, Zillow.com
From Jeff Somers at Zillow Blog:
Soon, we will be launching the capability for brokers to automatically upload their active listings for free to Zillow, reaching the more than 4 million people who come to the site every month — more than half of whom are in the market to buy or sell.Even when we first launched the ability for listing agents and brokers to add their listings for free to Zillow last December, we knew we wanted to find ways to make the process even easier. We have talked with numerous agents and brokers around the country — and we have heard over and over that you want to send us listings through a direct broker feed. As I type, our developers are wrapping up work on a very simple tool that will allow brokers to automatically upload listings to the site and keep those listings up to date.
There is a form you can fill out to be notified when the feature becomes available.
Two days ago Zillow announced a similar sort of sign-up form for lenders. What might this mean? At the time, I held my tongue, since what I have to say is pure speculation. But with today’s news as hook, here are a couple of wild-eyed conjectures:
My guess is that they’re going to provide some kind of EZ lender hook-up for buyers and re-fi candidates. Perhaps LOs would have to assert interest in up to five zip codes or something like that. Zillow likes person-to-person contact, rather than engaging a nationwide vendor like Countrywide. If the presumption is that they’re looking for a comprehensively satisfying experience like Wikipedia or Ebay — and this is the presumption I work from when thinking about Zillow — then they’re going to want to facilitate relationships to be carried out on Zillow through time, rather than just throw off leads.
It is possible, using tax records and loan rates, to calculate profitable re-fi candidates: Homes that can be refinanced at a net savings, month-to-month, to the owner. Zillow has everything it needs to do this, and 70 million candidate homes to work from. This would be a smokin’ leads business if rates were going the other way. Even now, with credit card rates being what they are, it can be profitable to cash out equity to convert high interest debt to tax-free low interest debt. I don’t know that Zillow would to get involved in anything quite so commercial, but they can offer up very reliable guesses about who is sitting on a lot of equity.
Anyone got any better ideas?
Finally, just to get all my Zillow news off my newly-visible desk: To my knowledge, Arizona Senate Bill 1291 has not moved since May 9th.
Our legislature isn’t as constrained as Nevada’s, but the per diem gets reduced at the end of May to induce them to shut down the tents and go home. At the end of the session, the squeaky wheels come first. In other words, this may not go anywhere, which means status quo ante: Zillow is ordered to cease and desist, subject to prosecution by Attorney General Terry Goddard.
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On the mortgage side, if your Spidey-Sense is correct Greg, the fundamental problem with Zillow’s approach is that the accuracy and quality of information is still in the hands of the service providers that are spewing the data. By spewing I mean vomitous waste.
Zillow already allows Bankrate and LendingTree to advertise on their site…both perpetrators of grievous misinformation practices, with pending and settled litigation cases to back it up. So I doubt they’re concerned with the ethical standards of other 3rd party providers and the information they provide.
I fear that Zillow’s plans will only cause further confusion and misinformation for consumers in the market for a mortgage and/or related information. Zestimates have proven to be guesstimates at best, but are pretty innocuous by themselves. However, coupling cursory housing values with similar quality financial and interest rate data would produce some monumentally miZleading information.
This is what happens when a ‘real estate company’ is run by Tech Geeks…Don’t get me wrong, I like Tech Geeks and love technology, however, improper automation in the real estate and mortgage service industries does far more harm than good…
After all, this aint the travel agent industry were trying to improve
Another piece of breaking news that you missed was that Zillow just picked up a new key employee in Venessa Fox. Check out the posts here: http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/ and here: http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/124874898/
How to start your search for your new home in the Charleston South Carolina real estate market…
Charleston . Mount Pleasant. Summerville. Daniel Island. West Ashley. James Island. Johns Island. North…
[...] Greg Swann penned an article about Zillows recent cryptic announcement of a pending move into the mortgage arena…Trulia is rumored to be as well, and Redfin now offers a flat fee mortgage service (WHAT A NOVEL IDEA!). [...]
Great! Brokers might end up publishing their listings on a zillion web sites but the brain trust at ARMLS won’t let me buy another IDX site because it’s not my brokerage’s selected IDX vendor.
Phenomenally stupid. I’m trying to put the ARMLS IDX listings out on the web even more and ARMLS won’t allow it. Bureaucrats!
Meanwhile everybody and his brother could be publishing brokers’ listings online bypassing ARMLS.
When does Rucker retire?
John,
I don’t think that Rucker is – in any way – the problem. The decisions are made by the board of directors and at ARMLS they are not the “board of directed”.
From a technical standpoint, it has something to do with the FTP feed. Each broker gets one FTP feed and they can route it or give it to any IDX vendor they want to – but they only have one FTP feed to give. I don’t pretend to fully understand this and perhaps someone who actually understands all of this might chime in. I found out all of this when I saw a website from a company called Killer IDX and really liked their mapping search features. I could not get it because my broker gives his one IDX feed to Superlative (also the company that hosts my main site and four other URLs I own). There are numerous advantages to Superlative and I am not in any way unhappy with them but wish I could also have a Killer IDX feed, as well.
> but they only have one FTP feed to give
Strictly arbitrary. An FTP connection is alike unto an HTTP connection, the means by which you view this weblog. The quantity of “pipe” available is finite (albeit huge), but ARMLS chooses to regulate that data availability by rationing, rather than by price. Most brokers don’t even use their feed, so it would be nothing to give anyone who wants to pay as many feeds as desired. Priced to the market, ARMLS could add capacity to meet any demand. This is the way a profit-seeking business would do it, and, having done it that way, there might be a surge of innovation resulting from the availability of the data.
Greg, your thinking like a rational person again, instead of an MLS board member. I suspect the MLS feed rationing is a tactic of big brokers. You can have their listings, but they are keeping the source code of their IT investments all to themselves.
A big broker only needs 1 feed, since they can hire consultants and software engineers to develop anything they want. The small broker, which can’t compete with that level of investment, needs to rely on vendors. However, since no one vendor is best at everything, it forces you to make unpleasant trade off decisions.
Oh well, I hope Zillow copied Trulia’s instead of Realtor.com’s feed process. My adventures in digital listing land continue…
I think zillow will eventually become an invaluble tool for both realtors and consumers. I’m looking forward to their progress.
Update: Rucker is leaving in 6 months. I still maintain that he is not the source of any difficulties any of us may be having – but he is going to be gone by the 1st of the year – he is going to retire.
ARMLS is currently in the process of getting a new server – a RETS sever. This will occur in the next 30 – 60 days and will allow for numerous new types of services. As ARMLS will be able to see who is accessing (and from where) the data is being accessed they will be able to license it in ways that are currently not available. So, for John Wake (and ME!) having multiple FTP feeds may soon be possible.
I’m thinking that the only people who won’t be delighted with the new level of services are those who are now getting an ARMLS IDX feed illegally.
Russell,
Thanks.
It’s silly for ARMLS to restrict members to one IDX website. For example, Killer IDX is already pulling the data from ARMLS so it has absolutely NO impact on ARMLS’s computer if they allow Killer IDX to take the data Killer IDX has already pulled from ARMLS and to sell it to one more IDX website. It would have NO impact at all on ARMLS.
It’s bureaucracy problem, not a technical one.
“… wish I could also have a Killer IDX feed, as well.”
Exactly, my feeling. I might want to have one website targeting seniors, another targeting luxury home buyers, another targeting McCormick Ranch home sellers, another targeting people who love maps, whatever. (Try that Zillow!) And I would want to use the best IDX vendor suited to each one.
I talked to a rep on the ARMLS committee from the Scottsdale Association of Realtors last fall and he was extremely sympathetic… but the policy remains.
By the way, I think Wolfnet has the best IDX maps… but, alas, I can’t use them.
[...] I think Warren also would chuckle at Zillow and their inevitable march toward approaching MLSs for listing data feeds. They just recently started asking brokers for listings. They need critical mass, and their earlier attempts haven’t come close. Maybe they’ll get there if some of the big brokers decide to participate, but my guess is that critical mass will only come through the cooperative model of the MLS. [...]
[...] Bloodhound Realty Zillow.com news: Broker listing feeds “coming soon,” a lender opportunity and no news is not good news in Arizona [...]