Now that Zillow and Trulia have merged and watch realtor.com fade away in the rear-view mirror, how does Move, Inc. and News Corp feel about it? They appear to be hanging their hat on accuracy, and after five months haven’t done anything better than the competition.
When you go to realtor.com’s link to ‘find a realtor’, they give you the list of agents in alphabetical order with no other qualifiers. If that’s all you got, you might as well pack it up.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32965-move-were-ready-to-take-on-zillow-trulia
With the close of the multi-billion dollar merger deal between Zillow and Trulia now complete, the landscape of online real estate is about to change dramatically again. But the companies’ largest competitor says it’s not really worried about what Zillow-Trulia does going forward and expects the companies to struggle through the integration process.
In fact, Move Inc., which is owned by News Corp and operates Realtor.com for the National Association of Realtors, said that it’s already seeing record traffic on Realtor.com and expects those figures to only grow.
“Zillow’s year of the merge will be Realtor.com’s year of the surge,” Move said. “As our competitor grapples with the challenges of integrating two very similar businesses, Realtor.com will continue to provide the most accurate and up-to-date property listings in America, as well as the most valuable professional tools for brokers and agents.”
The battle between the online real estate giants has only escalated in the last few months.
Soon after Zillow and Trulia announced their merger, News Corp announced in September that it intended to buy Move and bring Realtor.com into the News Corp family of media properties.
When News Corp made the acquisition of Move official, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said he wanted to “turbo-charge” Realtor.com.
“In partnership with the National Association of Realtors and its 1 million members, we look forward to turbo-charging realtor.com and making it the most popular and profitable property site in America,” Thomson said in November.
Read full article here:
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32965-move-were-ready-to-take-on-zillow-trulia
I don’t think there will be a lot of integration struggle. I suspect Zillow will be to Move.inc what Google is to Bing-at best. The corporate bloat, and the culture that comes from over diversified companies that will handicap Move.inc.
Their quotes say it all. The article quotes some anonymous voice at Move, then they quote the CEO of News Corp, who cannot know a lot about marketing real estate, much less getting a good app together.
In other words, it’s likely nobody is currently in charge there aside from committees, new hires, consultants, and a CEO nobody wants to make angry, sending helpful memo’s.
What Daytrip said…and said well.
Zillow’s purchase of Trulia smacked of an air-clearing defensive purchase “with benefits” (a brand name that can be repurposed, valuable proprietary components, key executives, etc.).
Redfin is fading into obscurity.
Move/Realtor is looking more and more like a dead man walking.
Zillow moved with focus and velocity, had a killer app (Zestimate, for better and worse), and can live up to its promise of being the king-hell dominator in the space.
My current read, anyhow.
I totally agree.
Realtor.com is riding the wrong horse. What exactly is their beef about accuracy – I’m not sure it’s been defined.
If the complaint is that the Zestimates have a national 8% wrong average, wait until Zillow assembles a panel of realtors to conduct their own accuracy survey. It won’t be much closer than 8%. It’s not that easy.
If the accuracy beef is about incorrect listing data, then agents should be correcting it. Listings in Zillow can all be adjusted manually.
As long as zillow’s website and mobile is light years ahead of realtor.com, we don’t have a contest.
Spence talking about the future and how they plan to expand:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102435605
Realtor.com’s vision on how they will beat ZT:
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/32985-heres-moves-battle-plan-for-zillow-trulia
So how does O’Hara plan to take on Move’s biggest competitor?
First, by continuing to offer the “most comprehensive and accurate” listings.
“How will we compete?,” O’Hara said. “By continuing to build the best web and mobile experiences for consumers and the best and most valuable tools for brokers and agents, and by providing the market with the most comprehensive, most accurate and most up-to-date listings in the U.S.”
O’Hara said that he believes that Realtor.com’s accuracy is one of the main reasons the site has grown recently.
“Realtor.com is extremely well positioned to compete and thrive in this environment of industry consolidation and data-driven customers,” O’Hara said.
“We offer the most comprehensive and accurate listings in America, and we generate the highest-quality leads in the business,” O’Hara continued. “On top of this (perhaps because of it) we entered 2015 with impressive business momentum – brand awareness up more than 25%, web and mobile traffic up more than 30%, and 11 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth.”
O’Hara also said he believes that consumers and real estate professionals are “awakening” to the realization that Zillow and Trulia’s promises of shortcuts and discounts actually cost them more in the long run.
O’Hara also promised that Move will begin to quicken the pace of product innovation and “apply more marketing muscle to our consumer and industry outreach.
Upon the completion of the $2.5 billion acquisition of Trulia, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff said that he’s ready for the competition.
“When we started Realtor.com had a massive advantage. Out of nowhere Zillow and Trulia surpassed it,” Rascoff said Wednesday. “The current competitive environment – there still is a lot of competition but not more or less than last 10 years. I like our chances. We have great people and great brands and a running head start. But we are not resting.”
Rascoff also called out Move for providing less accurate listing data to Zillow through Listhub, which is owned by Move.
“When we announced we were parting ways with News Corp we were constrained on being reliant on a competitor for listings,” Rascoff said Wednesday morning. He said Listhub sent inferior listings to emphasize that Move’s Realtor.com had “higher quality listings.”
When Zillow announced that it was canceling its deal with Listhub, a Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire that it expects a “few hundred thousand” out of the 3.6 million listings currently on Zillow to be affected when the Listhub agreement ends on April 7, but said that Zillow is attempting to contact all of the potentially impacted MLSs to secure listing agreements to avoid any listings disappearing from Zillow.
As for Move, O’Hara said he’s ready for what ever comes next.
“When we do all of this, we execute on our vision of putting real estate at the fingertips of today’s information-driven consumer and enabling real estate professionals to provide their customers with indispensable and personalized service,” O’Hara said.
“And that’s how we win.”
I used to work for a place called Capstone Gemini in NYC. Their job was to go into corporations on the brink of bankruptcy, and tell them what to do. They paid us a ridiculous fee, because their backs were to the wall. I just worked on our media presentations. Usually, they’d clear a whole floor of their building for us to work. They’d make everyone leave their desks and camp on another floor. Employees would complain. The response was, “you don’t like it? how about being out of a job in 4 months? give ’em your desk.”
This is where I learned, first hand, that a lot of highly paid people don’t really know what they’re doing, don’t care that much, and will whistle a happy tune right into bankruptcy court.
The inefficiency of multi-level corporations is astounding. Like rich dysfunctional families, they make themselves look as if everything’s fine… with money. But the problems remain, and they grow until there’s an explosion.
One reason Apple made such quick progress from the scrap heap is they had one guy, with a clear vision, making all the important calls, and leaned on people to do their jobs. That is unusual.
When sizing up a company, look for the “mean and lean” aspect of it. If it doesn’t have it, it’s not going to be moving fast with a fast market.