When Zillow burst onto the scene some two years ago, I was, like many in the real estate business, skeptical about the website. Now, as the dust begins to settle, I’m finding that I kinda like the site.

The initial reaction of many Realtors, myself included, was very fearful towards Zillow for a couple of reasons.

1. The obvious concern was that their Zestimates were going to provide unrealistic expectations for consumers who believe that everything they read on the web is true.

And the truth is yes, I’ve dealt with both buyers and sellers who were more inclined to trust the mechanical valuation process of the website than they were my professional advice. Of course, they only lean that way when the Zestimate is in their favor (nobody ever says, “Tom, let’s lower our asking price. I saw it on Zillow.”)

But as time goes on, I’m finding that most people understand what Zillow is, and understand its limitations. An owner thinking his house is worth more than his Realtor is telling him is not a new phenomenon. Nor is the buyer who thinks it’s worth less.

(Hey, in this market, I want to believe in the Zestimate too. The lag on the Brentwood values shows my house worth almost $100 grand more than I could sell it for…)

2. The less-obvious concern was that Zillow was a disinter-mediation play. (Huh?) It means that Zillow was going to be the Travelocity of real estate, and do to Realtors what the travel sites did to travel agents.

Now I’m not saying that we’re totally in the clear on this one, but a lot of time has passed, and I don’t see it moving in that direction. Maybe I’m naive, maybe I’m falling into their trap. But I see how they’ve “gotten into the mortgage business” (by allowing lenders to give out quotes based on anonymous requests) and I don’t quite see the “Lending Tree” model evolving.

I also like the fact that I can create a profile and post my listings for free. And if I want to venture into their advertising medium, well they’ve made it so dirt cheap that I kind of feel like I’m foolish if I don’t put myself out there a bit. (How can I complain about a penny-per-impression?)

I also like what they’re doing on the Zillow Discussions part of the site. Much like the Trulia Voices feature that has created an open public forum for discussion of real estate and neighborhood related topics, the Discussions feature is really very engaging.

So call me a traitor, or naive or whatever. I’m beginning to fall into the pro-Zillow camp.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 6:03 am and is filed under Marketing, Real Estate, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.