Zillow Opens It Up

This morning’s announcment by Zillow blew the lid off a pot that was already beginning to boil.

There were always those who suspected the company had bigger plans. Well the cat’s out of the bag.

“We’re Opening It Up,” says Lloyd Frink, President . And with that, Zillow became the closest thing we have to nationwide MLS system. “In geek speak, Zillow is moving from “read-only” mode to “read-write”. When we launched in February, our goal was to open up the deep repository of information about every home in America – which had been collecting cobwebs in county courthouses for decades — and then layering our Zestimates on top. Today, we begin our second phase, which means owners and real estate professionals can ‘write to the site’,” says Frink.

In other words, Zillow will make a market in real estate. Consumers can list their homes for sale in Zillow’s national property data base. You can upload photos, write about your neighborhood, even add “what I like about my home” comments, directly and without fees. More importantly, buyers can initiate a dialog directly with sellers. There is even a Make Me Move option, similar to eBay’s “Buy It Now”, that let’s you test the waters at a price that would truly make you move..

Of course, there will be endless speculation about the implications of all this. The wires are humming. For some “deep tissue” analysis, read Greg Swann’s posts at Bloodhound Blog, or check out Transparent Real Estate and Inman Real Estate.

As I said in The Brave New Real Estate World, the Internet is changing the way real estate will be bought and sold. Will it render the real estate profession irrelevant? Not likely.  But it will elevate our standards by forcing us to thoughtfully reexamine and articulate our value proposition in an environment where consumers have free access to information we used to consider proprietary.