I attended the Inman Connect Conference in New York City last week and spoke at a workshop. The picture above is from a session called: “Online Real Estate as Media Enterprise“. The panel was moderated by Brad Inman, and the panelists in the picture, from Left to right are: Thomas Evans President and CEO, Bankrate Inc., Pete Flint Co-Founder Trulia, Lloyd Frink, President Zillow, Vikkie Neil, VP Real Estate Scripps Networks Interactive. (HGTV’s Front Door.com)
After a Panel discussion they always open it up for questions from the audience. Not sure why, but only two questions were asked of this panel and one of them was asked by me. Part of the discussion was about property listings on the internet. Zillow, Trulia and HGTV are doing everything that they can to collect property listings, but they each have only a small percentage of the available listings on their web sites.
I am not the CEO or the owner of a big media, or internet company. I am the CEO of a small business, but I have direct contact with consumers and actually sell real estate. My question to the panel was: “Aren’t we doing consumers a disservice by only having a small percentage of the available homes listed on sites like yours?”
No one could give me an answer, so I will answer it for the panel. Yes we are doing consumers a disservice. We are confusing them, and they may even be missing opportunities by looking at the wrong web sites as they search for homes. They go to a site like Zillow or Trulia and search for properties using all of that nifty wiz bang technology but they are only seeing a very small percentage of the available listings. The real estate industry has all of the listings but uses marginal web sites and technology to deploy them, which is why the media companies web sites have gained traction in the first place. Now consumers have a choice they can look at some of the listings on cutting edge sites or go to marginal hard to navigate, poorly designed sites and get all of the listings.
Here in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota we have plenty of homes on the market to choose from. When consumers come to my web site, they can search all of the available listings . . . well they can’t find all of the for sale by owner listings, but the vast majority of the available homes are listed on the MLS and available through my site. What is the value of having some of the listings on Zillow or Trulia? Are we doing the consumer a disservice? I will answer yes to that, because I deal directly with consumers every day, and they are confused.
Home shoppers ask a lot of questions and many are confused by the number of web sites where they can search for homes. . . . online real estate as media enterprise? To some companies real estate listings are an enterprise. They don’t sell real estate, they are in the media business. I wish they would spend more time talking to people who do sell real estate and who have direct contact with consumers, or more time talking to consumers.
These companies don’t want our listing data so that they can help consumers they want it so they can make money off of it. People like me go out and get the listing and a bunch of companies repackage the information I obtain and use it to make money. The consumer wants all of the accurate information they can get in a pretty, easy to navigate package. Neither the real estate companies or the other cottage industries that have sprung up because of it are giving the consumer what they want.
