On Tuesday I had the honor of speaking at the California REALTOR® EXPO 2006, the state’s largest real estate trade show (10,000+ attend). I presented on a panel called Futurecast: Visionaries Discuss Technology in a Shifting Market. CAR Executive Vice President Joel Singer, moderator for the panel, opened with an overview of the changes taking place in the real estate industry, particularly the role the Internet is playing and how people are using the Web to find Realtors. (As a side note, I think that CAR does a tremendous job collecting and sharing this kind of information – we wrote about their findings in an earlier post.)
Joining me on the panel were Allan Dalton, president of REALTOR.com®; and Brad Inman, chairman and CEO of TurnHere Inc. and founder of Inman News. Each of us had ten minutes to present information about our companies and our opinions of where the industry was headed, after which we answered questions from the audience. For me, this was an exceptional opportunity to address a large audience of Realtors. By a show of hands from the more than 1,500 people in the audience, it was obvious that most, if not all, had not only heard of Zillow but had also been on the site. Given this, I spent less time discussing the site and more time talking about our business model as a media company. We make money by selling ads, and have no plans to divert from this core business model.
This is radically different from another company I helped to start, Expedia. At Expedia, we made money off the transaction. Having spent time now in both the travel and real estate industries, I will repeat something I’ve said in other forums: real estate is not travel. Real estate agents are not going to be replaced by people on the phone or by a Web site. They play an invaluable role in the industry in guiding and advising customers in what is the most important financial decision of their lives.
Where Zillow comes in is as a free research tool. Our goal is to provide people with information and tools so that when they sit with their agent, they are better informed and more confident about their options and choices. Zestimates, coupled with our My Estimator tool to revise estimates, are a starting point for customers and professionals to work from, not an absolute value. Having said all this, there were certainly some on Tuesday who still seemed to perceive us as focused on minimizing the role of the professional. I hope that over time, those who feel this way will recognize that giving consumers access to free real estate information is a good thing for the entire industry and that we are a partner.
Our panel ended with some excellent questions about our Zestimates and our plans for the future. My answer: we will continue to focus on improving our Zestimates (and as we do this, will continue to be transparent about our accuracy in every area we cover), and we will also continue to add more tools and content to our site for buyers, sellers and owners. I’m looking forward to the day in the not so distant future when we have even more ways for real estate professionals to interact with Zillow — so they can feel that Zillow is working for them as much as it is working for consumers. Stay tuned!