There has to be a balance and perhaps this act (and similar ones like it) will help the market find that balance. The old business model, where a realtor picks what to show you and tells you what it is worth, is dying. I initially saw the guy in the video as someone who is grasping at keeping things the same. But as I thought about it I remembered my frustration with the foreclosure sites when I was shopping. How they kept orphaned data, overstated data, listed the mailing address as a foreclosure (when a rental or vacation home was being foreclosed on, they would list the owner’s primary residence because it was where the notice was mailed) and a whole host of other things that made 9 out 10 listed foreclosures inaccurate. Hell I lived in my house for a year before I finally saw it dropped from the listings. There were some that were better than others, some cleaned up their act, but in the beginning it was anarchy and a total waste of my time. I ended up having to do it myself.
Early on I noticed Zillow listings were out of date, so I ignored them. Redfin stayed on top of it, but that was mls data and if you found one you liked, the listing agent still got their comission, the buyer’s agent just took less because you did the searching, they just did the offer. It was a different model, but not like what this guy is complaining about. In fact when I was searching, redfin would not even waste their time if you wanted a short sale, it took too much of their time. They led me to a few but I had to go find my own realtor.
Like a lot of market shifts, some ideas fail, some companies fail, in the end what we get is a better system. Kaypro does not make laptops, but they were a pioneer in portable computing. Tesla may not corner the plug in car market, but we needed them to get the fusion 100mpg plug in this fall. Zillow and truila may not last because their acts of desparation may be their undoing, but their existence may shape the market. For every apple or amazon that managed to catch lightening in a bottle, there are a hundred webvans and cdnow’s by the wayside.
The real estate system has and will continue to change, but in the end there will likely be a fusion of market and transaction knowledge combined with open market data. The mls will either figure out a way to share it’s data, while preserving it’s integrity/security (like the code to the keybox, or when the seller is home), or the mls will be another story I tell my kids about a company that vanished because it failed to change. Maybe they should ask the newspaper industry for a few tips on what not to do.
