The titans of on-line real estate in a panel discussion about the future:
In the beginning the moderator claimed that Zillow is the MLS in many cities, and their COO didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Either Zillow is planning a sneak attack, or they are going the Redfin way and playing nice with the realtor community. While it seems inevitable that one website could dominate the space, and perhaps become the PublicMLS, for now the three of them seem happy to co-mingle in the space.
The third-party websites (Zillow, Trulia, & Realtor.com) are focused on selling advertising and leads to realtors. They discuss how they want to give realtors more data about the consumers, such as their recent search parameters and more on their wants and needs. But of course with permission only and let’s guard it carefully.
I thought the Realtor.com president had more to say than anyone else, mostly because he stood up for publishing the sales histories of agents in the name of transparency. It could be that the website that brings that specific data to the public will take the lead. But as long as the Big Three are selling ads to realtors, they may not want to ruffle feathers.
Seems like there is an awful lot of data on the net these days about homes sales. Isn’t part of the mls’s grip on the industry is the database they have?
If a homeowner wanted to sell their house themselves they could easily find some data on the net about recent sales.