I’m rooting for Zillow. I don’t put much credence in their valuation. But I love how they give information such as sales and taxes that was previously hard to obtain.
It think that the more information consumers can obtain on their own, the more they’ll be able to make good decisions.
I remember the days when the only way to obtain info was to contact a realtor who would drive you around and pressure you to buy. Psychology is that buyers feel they owe it to give a realtor business just for driving them around. With Internet technology, a potential buyer can get to know a neighborhood and look around for years before he ever buys anything.
I don’t know about you guys, but when I look to buy anything online, if an items has been on for while, I would not even give it a second look. The same goes for something that is over-the-top in terms of price. I love to see Craigslist items with “make me offer.” Sometimes I get great deals by making a low-ball offer. Most other times, the seller will get offended and say that he has other offers already. But then I see the same item listed again and again with an eventual price reduction back to reality. Internet technology allows the consumer to get a better feel of the market.
Also looking at RE, online listing lets buyers know how much choices there are out there. In the past, the realtor would just show you one sheet of 12 houses and that was it.
I also love ziprealty. Since I signed up on zip realty there were only several properties in my location/price range. Now, I get several emails per week telling me of new listings. The ziprealty agent also doesn’t bother me with useless phone calls. Just the number of ziprealty emails I get lately tells me that the market is down.
I believe you still need a good agent to sell your house, but I would use ziprealty to buy my next home.
We are only at the beginning of changes in how RE is bought and sold. Also my feeling is that coming downturn will be more severe than 1990s because buyers now have access to inventory and information.
