Imagine for a moment, a perfect world - one in which you had access to absolutely everything you need to know about the purchase of a potential new home. And by everything, I mean exactly that. Access to listing information, county data, mortgage history, neighborhood and demographic data, how much money your potential new neighbor made last year, if they had skipped a few payments on their mortgage note and even who they voted for.... By now, I know some of you are saying...Whoa...hang on Lola!
Let's face it, we are a voyeristic culture. We love to snoop! However, I daresay, that not many of us would be really happy if Facebook changed its algorithm to embrace total transparency; allowing people to know what you looked at on their pages while you were snooping ("I mean visiting") and how much time you spent viewing their stuff. And then, what if Facebook used its vast database of knowledge of your actions online to make predictions about future behavior (including off-line decision) and made that information public?
Sounds far fetched? Well, actually a modified version of this type of 'information aggregation' is well in the works for the real estate industry. With billions of bytes of information now accessible through networks & databases on the web, it is possible to create fairly accurate personal profies and even more importantly to predict the potential actions and behavior patterns of people who own homes or who would like to.
While there are many potentially positive benefits for this type of information - some examples which would include (to name just a few):
1. Smart technology to control the distribution of public resources like water, electricity
2. Enhanced security in tracking and dealing with crime
3. More effective planning for future housing development
There are also real considerations; some of which are of real concern. Zillow, which has become an important voice in the world of real estate is one of the leading aggregators of not only real estate information, but demographic and personal data as well. In the interview with Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CEO below, he discusses the implications of data dissemination with regards to potential privacy issues and the relevant challenges of determining what to publish and when. In a world in which we know information can be easily manipulated to provide a perspective which many have perhaps presumed was the sole purview of their private world, this gives me pause.
A few notes of interest/concern which caught my attention as I listened were...
1. The ability to provide information through Zillow of private property owners who allowed fracking on their properties. ( Although I am personally against fracking, I wonder...to what extent do people have the right to know what you do on your private property as long as you are not breaking the law?)
2. The publishing of voting records in alignment with housing addresses and homeowner names - (Does knowledge of your voting record benefit the public good when it comes to housing information. Could this type of data impact discrimination and further promote segregation and/or division?)
3. Publishing of sex offender data for neighborhood/communities based on housing data
*The entire interview is worth a listen if you're a member of the real estate community, however if you want to short cut, I'd suggest you start listening around the 20 minute mark.
In closing, the need to know vs the right to privacy is a weighty debate. One which warrants careful and deliberate discussion and above all transparency. While Zillow is not currently sharing any of the information highlighted above, what's instructive to me is that not only could it do so fairly easily as it has the data feeds available to do so, but that Rascoff intimates that in his view, information is ultimately to be shared if available. Something which I don't think is necessarily true or wise.
Few would argue today, that free access of listing data to consumers is a bad thing even though it was very much resisted by the real estate community at first. However, is it possible that there were and are some safeguards which we would be prudent to mind? Sometimes the opening of Pandora's Box yields far more than we understood we had bargained for!
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