- Part I: It's Not Your Father's MLS.
- Part II: Zillow, The Google of Real Estate?
- Part III: Zillow, The Walmart of Real Estate?
Before Zillow launched in 2/06, there was much speculation and fantasizing about what it would be. One thought about Zillow was a national MLS for FSBO listings. Another guess had Zillow starting an MLS combining Realtor and FSBO listings. On the 6 month anniversary of Zillow's launch its time for more fantasy .
So far Zillow is a Real Estate Search Engine with close to 65 million street address data pages including tax assessments, aerial photographs, schematic maps, integrated aerial-schematic maps, home value estimates (Zestimates) of your property, area property value Zindexes and more to come. And like Google, which can sell relevant ads on all its results pages, Zillow can sell Real Estate related ads on all its property results pages.
Zillow is the first Real Estate Search Engine to use Google's ad-sale (pay-per-click, PPC) revenue model and not the subscription, sponsorship or pay-per-view (PPV) models used by Realtor.com, HouseValues.com and the other Real Estate Search Engines. If AOL, MSN and Yahoo! have all gone over to Google's model, can Real Estate Search be far behind?
Zillow has strategic partnerships with 4 of the top 5 general (horizontal) Search Engines. Zillow displays Google ads, has Pictometry pictures through MSN, provides home value estimates to Yahoo! and provides searchers with loan estimates through LendingTree (IAC and Ask.com). Is it long before Zillow opens up all its information to all the Search Engines?
With all Zillow's Real Estate data, over 2 terrible terabytes, and Search Engine connections; will it be long before Zillow silences all the griping about the Realtor Associations, the NAR and the MLS's and comes up with a Local/National MLS of its own, the MLZ, or Multiple Listing Zillow? And not your father's MLS.
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