Before Zillow launched in 2/06, we were almost as paranoid of them as we are now. The Inman Real Estate News Service even ran a contest to see who could predict what Zillow would be. Two thoughts were a National MLS and an MLS including FSBO's. Since launch Zillow has added maps, aerial photos, a home financing section and has progressed toward its goal to provide a valuation of 65 million houses. With all those Web pages hooked to all those home street addresses, how soon will it be before Zillow offers Realtors the opportunity to post pictures and advertise on the page of their own listings? You can already advertise on the Zillow Web pages of all the homes in your farm, Zip Code, Town or County.
A free, user friendly, MLS? We'll have to call it an MLZ, a Multiple Listing Zillow. All our listings will be open to all search engines (Zillow already has partnerships with Google, Yahoo!, MSN and LendingTree.) and to all home searchers. We're better than FSBO's because we open their homes up to a bigger market, but we hide our listings from the search engines (the Invisible Web). We can join Zillow and the other search engines in a business deal benefiting both sides or we can watch the Web and the Department of Justice take our birthright from us. The question of working with them is not whether, but when.
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