Anti-Zillow Gene

Debbie Gartner - If Zillow dies, someone else would fill the gap. And funny, but we do not have such feelings towards Realtor.com. I would also credit Zillow/Trulia for pushing Realtor.com to become more competitive.

I do not understand why so many agents are not using Zillow. You do, I do, many others do. But so many don't.

We thought with Internet for Real Estate. We, somehow, have an aversion to progress.

And it is not a good thing

Ted Baker - We will see. And the first phase may be purely technical. If the pages star load very slow, that would be a problem. It was on AR yesterday. Hope it was a glitch, and not the inadequate system capacity, which we suffered through before Market Leader.

Shuchi Agrawal - for some reason when we compare Zillow to agents, we only imply that these are good agents. And it is so often not the case.

So, while Zillow might lose to a great agent, it is rather competitive against average agents.

Karen Winters - this is a very wise statement. Knowing that people check Zillow and trust it, it would only be prudent to check Zillow before talking to the customer. Then you know what they saw and what they believe, and then you can substantiate your opinion.

Not knowing what our customers know may hurt.

Sharon Parisi - thank you. Yes, they try to sell, but it is up to us whether to buy or not. And if agents buy, it means that there is the value. Saying that everybody tried and left is not true. I sometimes surprised to see famous AR bloggers as Zillow premier blogger.

I have my two sites with Zillow. $10 a month and pretty decent trafic of them. Good job, guys.

Doyle Lee Austin Davison Iv - I always say that we come here for very different reasons. And this is the beauty of it.

Lenn Harley - I think we have the owners, and then ML and then no ownership, as Trulia and Zillow did not know/want to deal with it. AR was too small and insignificant for them.

There are so many directions it could be steered towards, that predicting it is as difficult as winnig in Powerball.

Funny, tis is my second comment, because the first one disappeared... Not tying it to the changes, but yet, interesting.

Jon Kolsky - I dare to disagree, and I believe the flaw in this "majority" logic is that this majority are agents and brokers, not the public.

i tend to think that public likes it as a tool, that gives them more than any other tool. The public, which does not care much about real estate professionals. ANd it is the tool they are widely using, hence the strength of Zillow and Trulia.

So, when we have a clash between interests of the public and the small (relatively) group of professionals, public wins.

If my clients demand that they are on Zillow, they willbe on Zillow, whether it is me, who puts them there, or someone else, less burdened with some corproate principals.

Jon, I also recently ventured into putting rental properties on Zillow, and what was sitting without any interest on MLS moved immediately. I was surprised byt the number of contacts that I had.

I am glad it works, and I am trying to increase my rental listings because of hope that Zillow would keep it this way.

So, yes, I know that majority of agents and brokers feel that Zillow is their personal enemy. They threaten our livelihood.

But general public probably has more reasons to like Zillow, than to hate it. Actually, they probably have no reason to hate Zillow and Trulia.

Also, interestingly, we, agents, now use it as a tool to talk to Sellers, when they have wrong ideas of values of their properties. If Zillow is with you, you have the strongest point. Here is what Zillow says, and every buyer would look at Zillow.

Thank you

Jon Kolsky - "countless homeowners that continually complain about the inaccurate zestimates placed on their homes". I am a bit surprised. It is a website, they do not like it, they leave it. Why are they complaining? If they do not like the Zestimate, they have the option of ordering a full-scale appraisal. I believe all those countless then would be complaining on Appraisal, but it is unlikely, as they need to pay for the appraisal, and Zestimate is free.

Jon Kolsky - Just Googled and here is the quote "Zillow snared 16.53 percent of real estate traffic, followed by Trulia (8.66 percent) and realtor.com (7.26 percent)." This is their Web market share in February, 2015.

Zillow is the most visited site of all real estate sites (check the chart in the Inman's article linked above). Zillow and Trulia combined capture 26% of all real estate related web traffic.

Obviously, these are all haters :)

Statement about agents hating Zillow do not impress me. I keep seeing the best agents on Zillow all the time. Here is a link to Sacrament agents, You see Elizabeth Weintraub Sacramento Real Estate Agent, Top 1% of Lyon Agents, and she is one of the very best. I have seen others. Obviously Elizabeth gets results, she would not spend a dime if it does not work.

While you are trying to reason why hate Zillow, I do not have that problem. I believe it is fighting the progress, I personally use them, and not using them in my book is crazy, as it saves me tons of time and is surprisingly accurate. And this is me, who can do a CMA. But so far it is as good as my CMA, but it is so much faster.

As for the tool, Apple did not create their line of machines to be used as a tool. They probably did it to make crapload of money. And I do not care, I use it the way it suits me, and in this sense it is a tool.

I do not buy this corporate that as real estate professionals we have to hate them for this or for that. I don't. I, probably, like them.

Kill me for that :)

Jon Kolsky - the percentage of unhappy people is pretty equal. Zillow is not getting more than any other. Numbers do not lie, and I do not understand why you would not believe what you see. To  tell you the truth, I can't even understand how you work witout using them, I would have time to do all those CMAs.

Also, tried to tell you that my clients demand that their properties are on Zillow, and they do not mind that they would not be on MLS.

And the best part of it is that I agree with them. I do not subscribe for one reason only: I only deal with condos, and they do not offer only condo leads. If they do, I ma the first one to sign up.

Jon Kolsky - I forgot to mention. I have several websites. One I am working upon, whioch is mine, and I hope my daughter and her talented husband would help me with that, however, it is not the one generating calls. And calls are generated by Zillow site. $10 a month and calls coming... It is www.DaytonaCondoHotel.com

It is to the point, that I set another site, this time not for condo-hotels, but for condos.

Not yet finalized, but again, zillow site gets me majority of calls. And for $10. And I link my blogs there to my main site trying to build the following there.

Without any jokes, without any sarcasm, I would recommend Zillow sites. I believe, for $10 it is a great value.

Interesting article. However, it is a common problem, not Zillow's. So all numbers are flawed and flawed pretty much in the same proportion.

And I am again at a loss at your statement, that you have owners, who do not want to be on Zillow.

Number 1. If you list a property on MLS, and if this MLS feeds into Zillow, then Zillow shows the value at the listing price. No valuation, not value range, just listing price. So, for an owner, who is so concerned with the low estimate, the best course of action is to have the property listed and reflected on Zillow, as this is how Zillow shows that they trust the price suggested by the agent.

Not doing it, if the info from the listing is not fed to Zillow, may result in that dreaded "low" Zestimate.

Simply do not see the logic here.

It is not that there is no value in Zillow, it is that you refuse to see it. BTW, MLS around the country do see it and more and more negotiate with Zillow, as they get the access to public data, whci they could use on their MLS in exchange of the feed to Zillow.