There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Zillow.com (page 1 of 13)

If Zillow is buying its marketing from Fiverr, it should spring for the upsell.

Who thinks this works as a landing page? [click the image to see it full size]

Is that a family or a human trafficking incident? A witness protection move-in?

Not much stuff, but not much house to move into. Gotta love that curb appeal, though: No one will suspect either the seller or the buyers are guilty of yard work.

Meanwhile: “Change starts here.” Not on account of this, it doesn’t.

I think if Zillow’s shareholders were to hire an actual marketing director, the change might start to add up.

Overnight News: Why is there no real estate news on weekends – you know, when real estate happens?

Ya think it's easy?

“Go ahead. Fool around with my food. Find out what happens.”

A beef I’ve had with the internet since there was an internet to have a beef with: Writers don’t write when readers have time to read. Is this classism or cluelessness: Why would the public library be closed on Sunday, the day when taxpayers have time to go there? If you spend too much time thinking about the incongruities of social existence, you could end up a weblogger.

Meanwhile, the only actual real estate news I have to offer this morning is my own scoop: Zillow and OpenDoor are chiseling Buyer’s Agents in their Phoenix listings. Totally not bleeding themselves out.

The Verge: Bond was the last straw: Regal and Cineworld will reportedly close all theaters in US and UK next week. The contractions we are seeing in commercial real estate categories were happening already, anyway. This year is simply accelerating in-motion efficiencies, with the result that 2020 could end up serving up the benefits of a full-on recession – in Trump time.

Science Alert: 35 Years of Research Into Coronavirus Infections Show Long-Term Immunity Is Unlikely.

The Post Millennial: Mathematics association declares math is racist. Not racist, anti-Grasshopper. Everything that makes Grasshoppers feel inadequate is trayf. Totally not a cult.

The City Journal: The Crypto State? How Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other technologies could point the way to new systems of governance.

A Sunday sermon for the Phoenix iBuyers: “Do not bind the mouths of the Buyer’s Agents.”

“I was going to pay you this whole pizza, but instead I’m keeping a quarter of it for myself. Why? Because you can’t spell sociopath without Ci, that’s why.”

I don’t list a lot, right now, but I have been working for years to list perfectly: Highest/safest/soonest offer in minimal Days on Market. I haven’t done my numbers in a while, but I’ve been under seven days, on average, for a long time, typically selling at or above Fair-Market Value. I sell bread-and-butter houses, and I sell them fast, for top-dollar, with no hassles and minimal showing-damage to the property.

Because I have a listing right now, I am aware of the competition. Interestingly, I ran across listings from both Zillow and OpenDoor that significantly underpay Buyer’s Agents.

Note well: Brokers are advised to avoid discussing commission rates amongst each other, since free speech and free assembly don’t count if you’re in business. Whatever. I certainly have the right to talk about commissions all alone.

So first: I hate it that the Listing Agent pays the Buyer’s Agent. We say the seller does, but the lenders would never allow that, just as they don’t allow buyers to pay for their own representation. Instead, the seller pays the Listing Agent a lot more than he will typically earn, with half or more of that commission income going to the Buyer’s Agent. You say the buyer is getting representation. I say I am paying a brokerage fee: The price of the introduction. If you don’t see the Agency problem here – I am buying your fiduciary’s loyalty, aligning his interests with mine and my seller’s and against yours – the NAR would love to have you testify on its side in the upcoming lawsuit over this idiotic compensation scheme.

But second: I Corinthians 9:7-10: “Do not bind the mouths of the grunts on the ground who are delivering your dinner!” Buyer’s Agents don’t work for their brokers, they work for Listing Agents. Freelance. On spec. They live on dreams and promises, too many of which don’t come true. They drive hundreds of miles a Read more

“Apparently, Opendoor and Zillow and Knock and Flyhomes and Offerpad have been wasting hundreds of millions on all those data scientists and CompSci Ph.D.’s from Stanford.” –Rob Hahn

That sounds right to me. 😉 The waste is not their salaries but the financial havoc they wreak as the very-most-backseat of drivers. That is to say, iBuyers suck at real estate investment, and their hubris prevents any sort of improvement.

“Are YOU notorious? Have you ever BEEN notorious? Well, I have… Not necessarily wise – but compensated.”

Yes, I’m Trump-quoting real-estate consultant The Notorious Rob for fun in the headline, just like the TV “news” does.

But: It turns out Eric Blackwell knows where to poke the Pooh bear’s mincing minions.

My experiences with Rob Hahn have not been pleasant, and this and his other posts are tl;dr, even assuming he knows anything worth reading about, an assumption I do not make.

What’s funny is that Señor Notorious is right here, despite his snark: As soon as the market turns, all of those poindexter models collapse.

And note well: There is ALWAYS something to howl about at BloodhoundBlog.

Zillow: Whatever you do. Don’t poke the bear. Lol. Poke!

It has been 8 years since I have regularly blogged here. During that time I have learned a lot, broadened what I do, and instead of working as an SEO constultant, I am working full time as the Director of Online Marketing with The Real Estate Group in Chesapeake VA. I still live in Southern Indiana, but I love working with roughly 250 of the best career minded agents and without a doubt led by the best broker owners that I have ever worked with. And I have met some great ones during my career. I probably should state here and I will with each post going forward that I am acting in my personal capacity and the views are mine alone and not that of my employers. (Do you know how difficult it was not to drop in a gratuitous Mike Pompeo reference here? Lol) –

I am not an Ivy League educated, MBA type. I am main street personified. So I look at things like Zillow’s announcement and the Notorious ROB’s response to it with a more practical and downhome point of view. (CLICK Here. Please read it before continuing. I’ll wait. 🙂 And be sure to see the menacing picture of the bear. 🙂 ) First off, I want to thank Rob for the transparency that he was paid to consult with Zillow on the PR response to this more. Many others might not have disclosed that. We all appreciate transparency.

But here from my perch just north of Louisville KY, in Southern Indiana, I would like to offer my response to his analysis. Boiled down he basically makes the case for “Real Estate Industry: OMIGOSH, WHATEVER you do, DON’T poke the bear!!! You will regret it! Zillow has (insert hushed tones) WALL Street Money! $2 Billion (end hushed tones) in cash. Ummm…okay Mitt Romney… but those of us on main street (and especially when we are not in Phoenix or one of the other cities that they iBuy in currently) might have a different view.

It does not take a Phd diploma on the wall to quickly calculate that even Read more

Overnight News: Why would the world’s dumbest real estate investor hire himself as his own broker? Because the emperor is definitely not naked!

“The money-making secret to real estate brokerage? Socialize the risks to the seller – not the broker.”

Yesterday’s big news? “The Incumbent” doubles down on dipshit. Dipshit-aficionados rejoice.

Housing Wire: Home prices post record two-month gain, FHFA says. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Redfin: Sacramento, Austin and Phoenix Are the Most Popular Destinations For People Searching For Homes Outside Their Metro Area. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Renovation loans get pandemic boost as homeowners want home offices. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Coronavirus pandemic fuels affordability crisis for homebuyers. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Dave Stevens: 5 reasons why mortgage rates are going to rise in 2021.

Seeking Alpha: Zillow Offers Will Expand Services in 2021.

Housing Wire: Zillow iBuying program brings real estate transactions in-house by licensing Zillow Homes employees.

Joanne Jacobs: Not indoctrinated, just ignorant.

City Journal: Merit on the Ropes.

Angelo Codevilla: Revolution 2020. Incidentally: CTRL-F ‘riot’; 6 found.

And our own Brian Brady! San Diego Union Tribune: I’m a Republican. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is both a loss and a legal opportunity.

The news is not that Zillow is going to have agents. It’s going to have newbies for agents.

Housing Wire:

A Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire that these people are already employed with Zillow, and will be getting real estate licenses. Zillow said it will not be recruiting for these positions.

“The normal career path is real estate agent to barista, but Zillow’s changing all that!”

It’s a boiler-room job – in the same article, George Laughton says Zillow still won’t be getting its hands dirty. But boiler-room selling and legally-compliant real estate brokerage are two different things.

Whatever. This morning I wrote this to my favorite pricing algorithm, soon to be disintermediated by exuberant, clueless college grads:

Of course this was the plan all along. The funny part? They think they’ve lived through a downturn with Coronavirus. Now they get to play catch-a-falling-knife with their own inventory.

The press release reads like they think the local brokers, like Laughton, are hoarding all the good leads from the failures and fallouts. I hope that’s the reason, just because it’s extra stupid.

Note that the 18 or so local brokers who were not screwed today now know what they have coming.

All of the iBuyers working in Phoenix suck at resale marketing. They make bone-headed marketing errors, common to many poor listers, but they make them by the hundreds. Pulling even more of that work in-house, when Zillow is so bad at it, seems daft – even absent the opportunity to make thousands upon thousands of regulatory infractions.

Prove me wrong, Zillow? You look like nothing but dead money to me.

A fun fact about #iBuyers? Every buy-box is redlining.

“Totally not redlining!”

The image is a map of Zillow’s sold iBuyer homes in the densest parts of Metropolitan Phoenix.

See that Madonana-like shape running West from the I-17 Freeway. Looks like a pregnant single-mom, doesn’t it? The poster-child of fair-housing law, right there on the map.

Looks like redlining, doesn’t it?

I’ve been watching Zillow’s iBuying results for years now. It always looks like redlining. I warned them about it when I was working as a pricing algorithm.

Is it really redlining? It’s the further fruits of a buy-box that wisely avoids old, small and irregular housing. For all of me, Zillow’s buy-box is much too loose, but the net consequence is that much of the housing Zillow excludes is in contiguous neighborhoods emerging West from the I-17.

Is it really redlining? The neighborhoods Zillow and the other iBuyers exclude in Metropolitan Phoenix are far browner, blacker and redder than the neighborhoods they include. That’s redlining de facto, by disproportionate impact.

Is it possible for investors to work from a buy-box that does not redline in disproportionate impact terms? I don’t see how. The buy-box my investors work from is much more stringent, to the point that we only work in a few subdivisions, by now.

Is it possible for licensed real estate brokers to work as investors without committing hundreds of de facto materially-damaging fair-housing violations by means of redlining? I don’t see how.

That’s why investors should not be licensed, for one thing, but I think it illuminates how poorly thought-out are all the “black lives matterers” among the iBuyers.

Have fun when the lawsuits start – particularly since you’ve all already declared what racists you are.

Why would Zillow abandon the all-time perfect real estate marketing tagline?

Do you want to hear my most perfect real estate marketing image? I’ve never seen this anywhere, except in my mind’s eye. It goes like this:

A little girl and her golden retriever are racing out the front door of their home. Why? Because “Daddy’s home!” – that’s why.

That’s it: Kid, dog, dad, with mom smiling proudly from the doorway. That’s The American Dream, circa 1955, but that is still the idyll we imagine when we think of home. It’s not simply a structure, not even merely a domicile. It’s Christmas and Independence Day, new babies and new puppies, tire swings and bedtime stories. Home is hope, the place where everything we love can thrive.

So tell me, if you can, what gives with Zillow?

Current tagline: “Home has never been more important.” That’s COVID FUD, I guess. The image is of a split-ranch home inhabited by vaguely visible people living widely-separated lives. I doubt anyone thinks that’s selling anything.

Recent tagline: “Reimagine home.” Say what? That dollop of word salad was intended to explain The Incumbent’s iBuyer business – by which Zillow reimagined profitability with a flame-thrower. The word “reimagine” itself has creepy Marxist connotations: As we have learned of late, “reimagine policing” turns out to mean “shut up or else!” Even leaving college-acquired SJW-ism aside, what needs to be “reimagined” about home?

So what did they have before that?

“Find your way home.”

And that would be simply perfect.

I Googled up old images with that tagline, and the photos are all pretty generic. But the tagline itself is beyond improvement: The aspirational quest is the literal function of the website. You simply cannot do better than that.

Why would they walk away from that? And why don’t they do a better job of selling that idea with images?

My takeaways? Billionaires are boobs. And marketing is for guerillas.

My client went shopping for houses on Trulia.com, and only 75% of those she found were bogus listings…

My note to her: “Trulia and Zillow both present inactive listings as though they were active to fool the public into thinking that they have more inventory than the agents they exploit for advertising money, even though their listings come straight from the MLS systems. Mere real estate brokers would be fined out of business for pulling these stunts.”

Despair you nothing, though, hard-working dogs. Every time Trulia or Zillow are caught pulling these bait-and-switch stunts, one more active real estate shopper is turned off of their sites forever. Nice going, suits…

Really, What If He’s Not Wrong?

A follow-up to an article on syndication I wrote just a short time ago.  Keep in mind that I’ve never even met Jim Abbott, and am not promoting his company.  But I’m listening harder now to him, and as he speaks his words continue to etch a path that I really believe warrants all of our attention.

At the end he does make a request.  In San Diego you can actually withhold syndication on a property by property basis.  On the MLS form simply check “No Syndication.”  Try it.  I discussed it yesterday with a client, and I’m listing her home without giving away all the info to you know who.  Oh, and I truly believe if buyers come to my site to learn about this property, even if they don’t want this particular home, it will greatly increase the likelihood of my working with them in the future.

Want to skin some cats, anyone?

Where Is He Wrong?

This was in the San Diego Union Tribune, and references an occurrence at a local real estate meeting here last week.

Wednesday: Jim Abbott, owner of a San Diego real estate brokerage, backed out from appearing on a real estate event’s panel after he was told to refrain from speaking negatively about real estate search sites including Zillow.

Zillow reserved a table at Thursday’s 2012 Real Estate Success Event, held at downtown’s San Diego Convention Center. Abbott is against third-party housing websites because he says they are inaccurate, misleading and take business from listing agents. Leaders from such sites say their platforms are popular with consumers because they’re easy to use and offer lots of information.

Here’s Jim Abbott’s video explaining why Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are…well, worthy of having something bad said about them.

Where is he wrong? If Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com really believe he’s off the rail, then why an effort to keep him down. Seems like a nice enough fellow. Not caustic. Simply telling a story.  Oh, and I know this isn’t “just in” news.  It’s simply news that I believe we as Realtors, actual fiduciaries to our clients, have a duty to take a stand on.

I, for one, think Mr. Jim Abbott is on point, articulate and taking us to an important question all of us should ponder and stand on as well.

Where am I wrong?

Jay Thompson takes leadership role at Zillow.com.

Witness:

Thompson joins Zillow’s growing partner outreach team, which includes Sara Bonert (director of broker services), Brad Andersohn (industry outreach manager), and recent addition Bob Bemis (vice president of partner relations). Together, the team advances Zillow’s goal of helping real estate agents grow and market their business.

Grow and market whose business?

This is precisely the kind of leadership I have come to expect from Jay since 2008 or so: The goat takes a left when the cattle take a right. If you don’t know what that means, you’ll probably be taking the right turn.

I’m killing comments on this post, because I don’t want you to soil yourself in public just because I’m the only person in this benighted industry who will tell you the truth.

 
More:

Table talk from my email: A Judas Goat- yes? Got it.

Me: What’s the point of having friends if you can’t sell ’em out?

Andersohn = ActiveRainiers

Bemis = MLS systems

Thompson = TwitBook losers

Coming soon: Project FUD at REBarCamp: Can you afford to be WITHOUT Zillow?

The window on integrity in real estate seems to be closing…

 
Still more…

Our business is corrupt, so it’s no surprise that this is the only place on the net where you can find the other side of this story. This is me from a comment at Real Estate Industry Watch:

Whatever job they end up giving him, Jay Thompson has already delivered everything Zillow is paying for: His endorsement of their brand. Now they get to make the fallacious “Even-Jay-Thompson” appeal: Even Jay Thompson thinks you should piss away your money on Zillow’s advertising. Jay has yearned to be the Head Lemming of the RE.net since the passing of Joe Ferrara, but, as we saw in the Denise Lones fiasco, he lacked that sad little man’s taste for blood. Luckily, Zillow has provided him with an even better cliff off of which to drive his credulous “followers.” It’s sad to say, but they deserve each other.

We’ve seen this kind of self-dealing posturing from Jay Thompson before — and not just from him, alas. But eighteen months from now — when you finally wake up and say, “Wuh happened?!?” Read more