Is the sky falling? Is the world coming to an end? Will we see human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together,,,, mass hysteria? Zillow to buy out Trulia! Will they open a Real Estate company and put everyone else out on the street? Zillow and Trulia and Move, Oh My!
Okay, let's step back from the cliff for a second. Should we give web portals like Zillow and Trulia attention? Sure, it is well deserved, they have done an amazing job of finding a need/want by the consumers and filling it. There could be an argument made that the REALTOR community, brokers, agents, MLS's and Trade Associations created this need by refusing to understand the changing expectations of our consumers. We have too long tried to force the public into looking at and buying homes through how we as an agency are most comfortable without asking, or really caring, how they might prefer.
But what are these massive portals that control most of the eyeballs in the house hunting market? They are first and last advertising sites, in fact the day that being the sole keeper of the data in the marketplace is long gone for Brokerages and Agents. If that is all you think you're valued by, you better quickly figure out a new value proposition. Today, Zillow and Trulia have replaced the newspaper advertising for properties, so instead of paying for a newspaper ad, you will be paying a portal for the leads generated.
What portals do not do is provide the actual service involved in buying or selling a home. Portals cannot replace REALTORS, because although people look for houses on the Internet, they don't buy them there. A house is NOT a commodity like a book on Amazon.com, and it never will be. A real estate transaction is much more complex and emotional and people still want a professional to help guide them through it. The difficult market of the last several years reinforced that message.
If you fear that they will move from their current model and go into the real estate sales business out of the Internet Advertising business, you have to consider that they would have to completely redo their current model and would lose all their current paying customers. Those customers are you and your brokers who pay them for the advertising and leads they generate. So to move into our part of the industry they would first lose all their revenue.
You are the trusted advisor, you are the one to guide them through the process. What you should be focusing on is how to give them that "Wow" experience as a consumer buying or selling a home through you. Our model at RE/MAX Ability Plus is to create a "Wow" experience for our clients, who are our agents, and to help support them to create that "Wow" for their clients.
So Fear Not.
