Blog of Spencer Rascoff, employee of Zillow. Today’s post gives out (already available) information about Zillow. They’ve raised $32 million. It sounds like they’re settling in on a business model: Zillow’s 75 employees (mostly engineers) will manage to get the beta version out within the next 6 months. The comparison of Zillow to Hotwire is also very informative.
-Galen
ShackPrices.com
Spencer is on a roll today with another article that summarizes Rich Barton’s talk at the Inman Conference… Interesting stuff and well worth a read.
Hey guys,
One thing that was interesting that these posts haven’t mentioned is that Rich spoke a bit about Ad-words and keywords. It sounded to me like they would be implementing some Google search type models in their business.
Lets see what else… Rich said that his mom was a Realtor.
Also since I was three rows back, i have to say his eyes lit up every time someone mentioned online closings. hmmmm?
I will go though my notes soon and write more.
Sounds interesting Giles. Perhaps they’re looking at a crawler model like Trulia and more full-featured online hand holding through the process. And possibly full-on inteligent search.
Online closings or digital closings are coming… Unfortunately, the one thing that hampers this technology in the Puget Sound real estate market is the county recording offices. They would have to be ‘online’ and be able to record closing documents signed digitally by consumers. And this costs, a lot.
The other issue is the actual client signing closing docs with a notary/escrow firm that is “digitally” capable/enabled.
Lenders & other allied real estate folks would have to probably create some sort of “standard” in regards to this.
The title companies will probably take the lead on this out of “first to market” competitive pressures.
Live under your means and it always pays to shop.
Legacy Escrow Service, Inc.
Travel and Real Estate are two completely different industries and with exception of data requirements, I don’t see any solid comparisons. Searching for a home is just a small part of an actual home buying process. Let’s not forget negotiating the deal, managing the transaction and acting as an advisor through the biggest purchase that a person will make in their lifetime. Until vacations cost $975,000 with no parking, let’s compare the same fruit!
Welcome Zillow…
Legacy,
I agree with what you are saying about your particular area, but in places like my backwoods county here in Georgia has their entire recording system online.
So it def. will be coming soon… and from speaking with the title companies at the conference about online closings…. they will def. be first to market with these services….
the question comes from who do these big title companies ultimately serve….right now they bow to the RE Brokerage industry… they are coming under just as much pressure from the DOJ as the Brokers… it just isn’t as publicized because people would have to take courses just to understand the subject matter.
But taking this all a step further… First American and the big boys aren’t the only title companies… so some of the smaller companies could easily partner with a new “tech” start up like Z and there ya go……
so its coming… maybe not from Z but from some other progressive internet company… my guess is 3 years out.
but your basic premise is still the bottle neck… the counties and their low tech backlog.