I think part of the problem, in understanding the radical nature of what Zillow.com did this week, is that we are conflating unlike things. As an example, when I speak of a National MLS, I am not talking about local MLS systems.<\/p>\n
For one thing, the sine qua non<\/i> purpose of a local MLS system is to advertise the co-broke commission to other agents, keeping it secret from consumers. This objective is not even on the radar of home searchers, whether they are looking at local IDX listings or a national site like Realtor.com.<\/p>\n
Kevin Boer posted an excellent analysis of why Zillow will not replace local MLS systems<\/a>. I agree, for now, but that’s not really the issue. In the second place, if we were to split the buyer’s agent’s commission from the listing agent’s commission, the entire<\/i> rationale for exclusive local MLS systems goes away.<\/p>\n But in the first place, home searchers are not going to any listings systems to find out about commissions. To the extent that a local MLS system corresponds to a market as Kevin sees it, to that extent a national<\/i> home listings service is an entirely different type of market. If the one facilitates the essential activities of real estate brokerage, the other exists to introduce home searchers to the real estate market, to particular real estate products and to real estate vendors.<\/p>\n They are not the same market, so conflating the two is an error. If you want, we can call the idea of a National MLS system something else: National Property Listings Service — NeoPoLiS, “new town” in Greek.<\/p>\n The point is that harping that Zillow can’t do this and Zillow can’t do that is completely true and completely pointless: Zillow isn’t<\/i> doing those things, nor could it, nor should<\/i> it. What Zillow might<\/i> be doing, and only time will tell if it can pull it off, is creating a national clearinghouse for listed homes — which will be brokered by off-site — and normally local — means.<\/p>\n In comments to one of my posts<\/a>, Dustin Luther raises some plausible objections to my arguments. His counter is that Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think part of the problem, in understanding the radical nature of what Zillow.com did this week, is that we are conflating unlike things. As an example, when I speak of a National MLS, I am not talking about local MLS systems. For one thing, the sine qua non purpose of a local MLS system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,6,5,25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-enduring-interest","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-zillowcom","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2022,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2022\/will-zillowcom-capture-every-mls-listing-in-houston-the-fourth-largest-metropolitan-market-in-the-united-states\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":0},"title":"Will Zillow.com capture every MLS listing in Houston, the fourth largest metropolitan market in the United States?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From Houston RealNews:The Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) may be a whisker away from providing listings data to real estate valuation site Zillow.com. HAR Chairman Rob Cook released a statement today: \"Zillow receives four million visitors per month so we would certainly like to have our listings on the site...\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":749,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/749\/you-were-saying-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":1},"title":"You were saying . . . ?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Chickens? Eggs? How about poached eggs on toast...? BloodhoundBlog's team coverage of the Zillow.com upgrades:Greg Swann: 2006 is the Year of Zillow: The 900 pound AVM has been upgraded to be a free listing platform and the presumptive national MLS system...Greg Swann: Early morning Zillow news round-up...Greg Swann: Zillow redux:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":741,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/741\/early-morning-zillow-news-round-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":2},"title":"Early morning Zillow news round-up . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a walk-through this morning, so this is just a list of what I've seen out there this morning. I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, and the real news will come when people have had time to play with the new feature set. No particular order, no presumption of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":739,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/739\/2006-is-the-year-of-zillow-the-900-pound-avm-has-been-upgraded-to-be-a-free-listing-platform-and-the-presumptive-national-mls-system\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":3},"title":"2006 is the Year of Zillow: The 900 pound AVM has been upgraded to be a free listing platform and the presumptive national MLS system . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The News An upgrade made tonight to Zillow.com's on-line home evaluation system will add the following new functionality:Owners or listing agents for any of the 67 million homes in Zillow's database will be able to list those homes for sale at no cost.Owners of any Zestimable homes will be able\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":746,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/746\/zillow-redux-a-post-diluvian-retrospective\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":4},"title":"Zillow redux: A post-diluvian retrospective . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Drew Meyers is doing an excellent job of cataloging the Zillow coverage. My plan is to ponder issues arising in posts and comments, here and everywhere. No guarantee that I'm not missing something, so it would be a great favor if you would point out my lapses. Zillow understands PR.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3226,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3226\/how-are-you-gonna-keep-em-up-in-your-vertical-real-estate-search-portal-when-the-future-of-home-search-is-horizontal-and-belongs-to-google\/","url_meta":{"origin":754,"position":5},"title":"How are you gonna keep ’em up in your vertical real estate search portal when the future of home search is horizontal — and Google’s?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Do this: Go to Google and search for Phoenix, AZ real estate. We don't compete for that term -- we're coming in like 34th place -- but a lot of people do -- like 3.5 million hits for the keyword without quotes. Here's what's interesting: Out of those 3.5 million\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}