You'll never understand what it is that you don't understand. I'm glad buyers agency is coming to your hometown. Maybe soon you'll learn that sub agency is not the default agency in other areas. Many parts of the country got rid of this almost 20 years ago. Welcome to year 2007.

It seems that Zillow has not taken hold in my back woods community of Evansville, IN. I posted one of my ten listings on Zillow and noticed that I was the only local Realtor taking advantage. There were also a total of five: 2 FSBO's and three others that were "Make Me Move". (maybe potential listings)

I guess it is getting more hits and if I were to add my other nine listings it would get me exposure, but would I also be opening the door to more competition. I am still not sure if being a pioneer will help or hurt. I am going to watch and see for a short while. With the limited amount of listings and the lack of Realtor interest would I also be smart or unwise to advertise in the upper right hand corner for .01 a hit and commit $100 bucks a month (10,000 hits) or would that open the flood gates and I get bought out by someone willing to pay $1.00 a hit. At that point I would rather do Google adwords.

I have also bought a FSBO site (www.EvansvilleHomesByOwner.com ) that I got sponsors to pay for and am trying to figure the best marketing idea to get participation from FSBO's and potential buyers.

Maybe Zillow will overrun these FSBO stealth sites including mine since posting on them is free.

What do you think Realthing?

"There's always a bad apple out of the the millions of plane passengers everyday. You just happen to be one. Would you have preferred horses instead?"
Yes! With wings. (but that was before your time)

Thank you. Now we can try to convince jaded New Yorkers/Long Islanders to sign an EBA with us.

I see what your problem is. Your world has horses on wings. I'm talking about the real world horses and real air planes. Granted, airplanes have their pros and cons but certainly future improvement to services through better training will improve. Slowly but surely the flying experience will improve.

Meanwhile you can wait for your horses on wings to come back.

Cool Cat, the only people really going to zillow are realtors. The majority of the traffic to that site is realtors. When you look at the number of realtors in the US it's not at all a suprise that Zillow is getting millions of hits a month.

I don't think Zillow will go anywhere but down.

But it's one thing to recognize what they are doing and taking advantage of the opportunities, it is another to be in complete denial of what's going on in this industry.

Somebody mentioned early that Zillow will become victims of the same thing that has caused fsbo sites to fail. Soon there will be too many places like fsbo for the content on zillow to be of any value.

For any product or service online to be of value there needs to be organization, Zillow won't have that. As we see already, my-currency.com and yourstreet.com are already on board. Epraisal.com and cyberhomes.com are also eyeing the same market as zillow.

Instead of doing something to beat Zillow why not use Zillow in your favor? I'm not banking on Zillow but I'm going to take advantage of them while I can.

I like Zillow features and technology. Soon every top producer will be offering the same stuff on thier site. Anybody that has ever tried to organize the internet ( google and yahoo excluded ) will fail. The internet is not a place to establish a standard and thats Zillow will fail.

My advice. Spend money promoting yourself. Forget about all the latest internet junk. But do take advantage of them.

Why would you want to spend millions of dollars on a project like zillow that will eventually fail when you can take advantage of them right now.

A lot of people here fail to see that Zillow is not a threat to the industry at all. They should be view as nothing more than a pilot program. Zillow is to the industry as a steering wheel is to your car. What is missing is you.

No need to invent a new steering wheel.

Paul, you're very good at stating the obvious, but missing the point.

Zillow has a link that says "Tell Us Its For Sale" and then asks for a price, and whether you are the owner, listing agent or someone else.

I'm not sure how you can say that by doing this I posted a "comment" on the property.

Further, you never responded to my post with the quote from the COE.

I did not post a comment on this property, I posted an electronic "for sale" sign when I am not the listing agent.

“Slowly but surely the flying experience will improve.”
Ahhh, youthful eternal optimism.
Here is another site that will value a property in competition to Zillow.
http://www.realestateabc.com/

I live on Long Island and apparently they didn't have anything in my town or township.

Perhaps this comes down to the conflict of interest between the agents best interests and the seller's best interests.

The listing agent has a fiduciary obligation to try and sell the home they are listing. If allowing other agents to talk about the listing and create "buzz" at the risk of their hijacking some potential buyers - (customers for their property as well as other properties) then how has this hurt the seller? Has it helped the helped the seller sell his property - probably. Has it siphoned off potential customers from the listing agents - possibly. What are the chances that the seller would feel betrayed if a listing agent restricted the use of the listing in a way that eliminated a potentially free source of publicity? Quite probable.

As long as the "buzz" created about the listing isn't negative, it is in the seller's best interest that they allow other agents to discuss the property. It's not unlike IDX links to the MLS where a brokerage is just as likely to get a call about another brokerage's listings as their own because a buyer found it on thier site.

Nevertheless, as an agent, I would feel uncomfortable about commenting on a listing if I hadn't consulted the listing agent.

Troy,
First so there is no confusion I will post the definition for comment.
com·ment(kmnt)
n.
1.
a. A written note intended as an explanation, illustration, or criticism of a passage in a book or other writing; an annotation.
b. A series of annotations or explanations.
2.
a. A statement of fact or opinion, especially a remark that expresses a personal reaction or attitude.
b. An implied conclusion or judgment: a novel that is a comment on contemporary lawlessness.
3. Talk; gossip: a divorce that caused much comment.
4. Computer Science A string of text in a program that does not function in the program itself but is used by the programmer to explain instructions.
5. Linguistics The part of a sentence that provides new information about the topic. Also called rheme.
v. com·ment·ed, com·ment·ing, com·ments
v.intr.
1. To make a comment; remark.
2. To serve as a judgmental commentary: "Her demise comments on [the Upper East Side's] entire way of life" Mark Muro.
v.tr.
To make comments on; annotate.


Now looking at (2a) everyone can see that a comment is a statement of fact or opinion. Stating a properties address and its for sale price qualifies as a comment since it is a statement of fact or opinion so I beleive we can put the comment question at its end.

Now who's playing word games?

Did you look up the definition of blog too, Paul? Cuz it's not a search engine like you say it is - least not in any dictionary I can find.

Blog is a web log. For you internet illiterates it's like a catalog of what's on the web. Very similar to the search engine as weblogs can be setup to be searchable. It's very similar to this discussion forum actually. It's searchable.

If you people are afraid that weblogs will ruin your business stay at home and don't use the web. Things are going to get rough on the internet because weblogs are just beginning.

A blog is not a catalog of whats on the web. It is one person's entries, similar to a diary, newspaper, magazine, etc.---the blog author creates the content and/or links to other blogs, websites, etc. The web is not being cataloged from a blog---it is being written about, selectively.

Weblogs are searchable but they are rudimentary, for the most part.