Are you high?

Sellsius, We are discussing Zillow and comparing Zillow to a catalog of blogs. These blogs are searchable by the street address. Neat huh?

Let me break it down for you. Zillow wants to offer searchable blogs of property values cataloged by the addresses.

Artiste, Yes I'm high. Now go share you wisdom elsewhere. Your incompetence is becoming contagious. If you can't see that Zillow is nothing more than a collection of property value blogs you have no place in business. Take your incompetence to the fast food lane.

Listen people. Read everything I wrote not just one or two sentences that match what you want to see.

^^high

Troy,

Just being precise since you did not know the definitions for comment. Sorry the facts failed to support your position. I rarely play word games.

Artiste,

Call it whatever makes you feel more secure but you should work on your reading comprehension because I never said it was a search engine. What I said was it was tied to a search engine. Zillow has simply added a new twist to blogging. You can tell then a house is for sale and make any additional comments on the property as well and then those comments are tied to their database so your comments will appear should someone search for that property or the avm picks it as a comp for the property they are searching. Just as when you post a comment in your blog it may come up should someone enter close wording in yahoo, google et.....


realting,
I agree that Zillow is no threat to our business. Their Zestimates are pathetically wrong in a hugh percentage of cases and that only serves to confuse people and in many cases reinforce the mistaken beliefs of many sellers that their properties are worth more than market reality. It seems that many sub-prime lenders and others are learning the hard way that AVM's may not be the best source for a home market value. This unfortunately will not stop people from going to their site. What needs to be done is their site data accuracy needs to be constantly questioned by those of us that know the reality. Would be nice to see the lenders and mortgage brokers joining in the questioning of their questionable data model.

Paul, Zillow's not a blog nor is posting anything on Zillow a blog, nor are the people posting on Zillow bloggers because they posted something on Zillow. Post the definition of blog if it supports your opinion - you can't - because you're wrong.

Paul,

I think that the facts (that you ignored) support my position very well.

I did not say "I think this house is worth a million dollars" which would be a statement of opinion.

I posted a sale price for the home. While this was a statement of fact, which according to your thorough analysis of the definition of "comment" is a comment. So you can feel good that you were able to correct me on that minor point.

However, I still contend that what I did was post a "for sale" sign on the property, electronically, and therefore violated the COE.

This small fact is the point which you chose to ignore while trying to set me straight on the hair-splitting definition of "comment"

People are redefining what blogs mean and what blogs do on a daily basis and here we have a mentally challenged individual demanding the real definition of a blog.

By the time you learn what blogs mean the functions will have changed. Next thing you know some people will be asking for the official meaning of a search engine.

That's about as ridiculous a statement as saying you are ILLEGALLY advertising yourself in all 50 states. Are you licensed in all 50 states?

Troy Richardson
Hoisington Realty, Inc.
Bennington, Vermont 05201
Bennington VT Real Estate

Why are you posting your signature where consumers from elsewhere can "assume" you are advertising?

If placing a comment on a blog is the same as placing a "for sale" sign to you then placing your signature is like sending postcards to consumers in every state.

Where are your disclaimers because the people reading this forum
could be already under contract with another agent in their state?

Wow. This is a very interesting conversation. I have a few different opinions about this situation.

I believe that Zillow is putting this whole idea on their site to advertise properties as a "for sale" database. Obviously there is no national MLS, so Zillow wants to come as close as possible to having as many listed properties on their site. They believe that this strategy will make them more popular on the internet and people will want to continue to use the site as a resource. Therefore, they will get better ratings for their advertisers.

I also believe that when an agent enters into an exclusive listing agreement with a seller, the agent has absolute sole marketing rights to that property. Some of you may not see Zillow as a property marketing site, but I do. They want to advertise as many properties as possible for their own benefit.

An agent advertising someone else's listing is unacceptable to some of us.

For example: Let's say I am the listing agent of a $20 million home. I would not want this property advertised by other agents with their contact info under it unless I were to give them my permission.

It may seem like it would be advantageous to your seller to have as many people as possible advertising their home, but this can also become very confusing to many buyers. They see a home advertised by 5 agents, how do they know who the actual listing agent is? I know it seems similar to IDX, but advertising for sole beneficial purposes for the advertiser needs permission from the listing agent.

What really gets me is that some of you actually believe that Zillow is doing this to "talk" about properties! They are doing it "advertise" these properties along with the person's contact info that put them on there. It is an advertising idea. Even iff people did comment on these properties on the Zillow site, how many of you would really want just anyone being able to comment on your listing? What if the comments were all negative? How would it make your listings look if people wrote negative comments about it to the general public? It would interfere with your marketing abilities and possibly turn away buyers from your property.

realting,

You couldn't be further off base. I said that what I did was a VIOLATION OF COE.

Can you show me where in the COE it says that I can't advertise worldwide if I want?

This conversation has gotten so far off track it's now ridiculous.

Go back and READ the quote from the COE that I posted to support my position that clicking the link on Zillow that says "Tell us it's for sale" and then posting a sale price is a violation of the COE.

Troy you can advertise anywhere you want. You can even commit a crime anywhere you want. But you are licensed in your state so thus shouldn't you be advertising only in your state?

This is not a COE issue this is about agency in your state and every other state in the union.



What if it is? So What? You don't want your sellers to know what the market really thinks about their property?

What if the comments were all positive? Would that make you feel more at peace?

If anything, Zillow to reveal how incompetent some of the agents are in this business. When people comment they will say both negative and postive things. Isn't that what do when they comment on things?

well... everyone has their own agenda.

realting must not be an agent or has some kind of buyer-side business model so that he wants to use others listings to draw in customers.

I personally think it's a violation, possibly illegal and certainly unethical to take someones listing and advertise it as your own (I'm not talking "blogging" which is different). You can use any terminology you'd like but advertising is advertising.

Here's some hypotheicals: What if the agent who has hijacked this listing and is promoting it turns out to be a child molestor or rapist? What if the property has a major price reduction and it is not shown -- thereby elminating potential buyers? What if there are errors created when posting the listing information? Who's going to track what's under contract and sold in a timely fashion?

Off-base indeed.

The listing agent does. Zillow doesn't list houses and they are not responsible for your listings. What is posted on the web stays on the web forever.



I am one of the top ten listing agents in my state.

Some of you are so lost and so behidn in time it's comical. There will be so many other sites like zillow coming down the pipelines that I'm actually afraid a lot of you will exit the business and bad mouth the industry.

There's mass exodus coming and if you don't understand the Zillow model I can pretty much guarantee you that you will be one of them. Unless you're happy doing one sale a year.

FEAR
DENIAL
ACCEPT
EXIT
BAD MOUTH


Many of you are in phase 2 right now.