Daniel Rothamel at the Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog hauls out that heirloom Virginia horsewhip. But is it Zillow.com he’s flaying?
If a customer were to call me and ask for a property valuation, or Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), and I responded by saying, “Sure, I can do that. I think you should know, however, that there is a 38% chance that I am going to be off by at least 10%,” I would expect that person to hang up on me and find another Realtor. If I continued to do this with every customer with whom I came in contact, I would very quickly find myself looking for another profession.
The founders of Zillow.com, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, were also the founders of travel site, Expedia.com. Do you think Expedia.com would still exist if it told customers that sure, they can book a travel package on the site, but 38% of the time, we will tell you the wrong price of your trip by at least 10%?
More:
Zillow will never be right. It isn’t capable of being right. It can’t see properties, and even self-reported data on a subject property won’t help, because it doesn’t have equivalent data on comparable properties. This will ALWAYS be a shortcoming of Zillow. And it is just the most glaring on a very long list.
And the peroration — cover your backside:
If enough of these people buy into the Zillow lie, then I suppose Zillow could become authoritative. The people who would be held responsible for such a tragedy would be the hard-working real estate professionals who know better. It is our responsibility to educate the public about property valuations, and the danger that lurks behind Zillow. The only reason that Zillow will EVER become an legitimate authority is if real estate professionals sit idly by and let that occur.
For all of me, I can’t figure out why the appraisers aren’t leading this charge. In any case, there is much more in Daniel’s post. Read the whole thing.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Todd Tarson says:
Daniel is right about us Realtors sitting idly by. To be honest with you, before I started reading you and others I didn’t really know what Zillow.com was and didn’t care. If conducted a poll of my Association right now I doubt that even 25% could explain Zillow.com to me.
We are sitting idly by because we don’t know and a great percentage of us are too arrogant (or ignorant) to pay attention. It seems the prevailing thought out there is the competition comes from the office across the street that offers a nationally renown name of a brokerage firm… or that rascally start up RE office just down the street that’s been busy recruiting agents. When actually the new competition is coming from the places not seen.
We are in for interesting times.
August 17, 2006 — 4:11 pm
Greg Swann says:
> We are in for interesting times.
Agreed.
Welcome back from your trip.
August 17, 2006 — 7:19 pm
Daniel says:
I think that the silence from appraisers comes as a result of two things: 1) Appraisers don’t blog. Just try and find a few. 2) Banks don’t use Zillow. That fact keeps Appraisers quite insulated from the effects of inaccurate “Zestimates.”
August 17, 2006 — 9:15 pm