
“Stop Zillow” - chrisan
https://stopzillow.com/
======
refurb
Is it just me or are realtors pissed because they're cut out of the action?

If someone is willing to sell their home at a given price, what's the problem?

~~~
teilo
It isn't just realtors that Zillow hurts. Their zestimate is nothing but the
roughest of guidelines. It is little better than a general market trend in a
geographical area. I am not a realtor, but a homeowner who learned, from
experience (buying and re-financing my own home) that Zillow is useless.

I can understand if it causes homeowners to set unrealistic expectations
regarding the value of their property, because, lets face it, there are a lot
of "unsophisticated" home owners / buyers out there. Some of these homeowners
/ buyers make life decisions based upon bad information. Yes, they should know
better, but many don't.

A home buyer / owner is looking for trusted authority for their property
value. The only legitimate authority to make that determination is an
appraiser. Zillow puts themselves forward as a trusted authority, which they
definitely are not. The unsophisticated buyer / owner sees them as a way to
avoid paying for an independent appraisal. But mistake.

~~~
prostoalex
I am not sure how anyone is hurt. If you don't like Zillow Instant Offers,
don't use Zillow Instant Offers. If you don't like Zestimate, don't use
Zestimate. If a seller has relied on a Zestimate and priced their home way out
there, let it stay on the market with zero bids for a few months, and maybe
they will get the message.

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nathanvanfleet
I don't have a lot of confidence in the skills of a real estate agent over
whatever it is that Zillow does to determine the price of homes. From what
I've seen real estate agents barely have the skills required to take photos
and fill in descriptive fields.

~~~
dingdongding
Why do realtors need skills to take photos and fill in descriptive fields?

~~~
sysblb
Because photos sell properties. My wife went and took about 30 shots of a
$500K property that had been on the market for over a year. Within 3 weeks
they had it under contract for $495K. The buyers said they had skimmed over
the property a time or two in the past but when it popped up on their latest
search they actually thought it was a different property because the picture
were so much better. Shots from the realtors iPhone just doesn't cut it
anymore... You want it sold, you hire someone to take the photos.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
And from the other side, I consistently like the properties of certain
agencies in my area and I can recognise it's theirs only by the pictures.

Coincidentally, they're the most expensive agency and one of the most
successful.

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watertorock
How about Zillow goes even further and cuts the realtor out entirely? How is a
realtor anything more than a middle man? Why should they get large percentage
of a sale when everyone finds their own homes online nowadays? All this does
is add cost to homes.

Shouldn't buying and selling a home today be a flat rate of $500 or $1000?

~~~
speby
"Everyone" does not find their own homes online. There still many, many buyers
and sellers who are not online or, if they are, may not utilize or minimally
utilize real estate sites like Zillow.

Furthermore, while many buyers may enjoy sites like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia,
and so forth, if you are buying in a new town/city or area you are unfamiliar
with, relying on a local experienced agent can help a buyer avoid costly
mistakes, or worse, end up over- (or under-) valuing property and missing a
good deal or an opportunity they likely should have taken.

Buyers also may wish to avoid paperwork and other hassles that an agent will
take care of for them. Is an agent still a pretty penny in terms of costs?
Absolutely but people still do it, every day.

For a more sophisticated buyer with some time to devote to the process, they
may not wish to use an agent in fact may not.

~~~
watertorock
As with most middle men, particularly commissioned sales middlemen, they
inflate costs and are incentived to do so.

I seen no valid reason a flat rate of $500 to $1000 per sale is not
reasonable.

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hamstercat
Is there no way to buy/sell a house without a realtor in the US? Here in
Canada we have a couple of companies that charge a flat fee (from a couple
hundred to a couple thousands depending on what you choose) in exchange of
professional photographic service, listing and DIY documents to facilitate the
selling. There's no commission to pay at the end so prices are usually a bit
lower than houses sold with a realtor. Of course a lot of people are still
using realtors, some of them because of a lack of time and others for the
sense of security it brings.

~~~
Finnucane
About 15 percent of residential sales in the US are managed without a realtor.
A homeowner is perfectly free to sell a house without one (such listings are
generally referred to as FSBO, for sale by owner). A FSBO doesn't get access
to MLS listings or any other promotional effort a realtor might provide, but
also they don't pay any commission.

So Zillow is free to act as an intermediary on whatever terms are acceptable
to the parties involved. On the other hand, Zillow's ability to act as an
intermediary is greatly enhanced by access to MLS data. So if the NAR pulled
Zillow's access to the MLS, a buyer would have a much harder time searching
for houses to buy without a realtor.

~~~
paulie_a
There is no one MLS, it isn't a cohesive database, it is made up of a ton of
tiny independent services with fairly obnoxious policies and inconsistent data
formats.

Zillow gets their data generally from the various MLS around the country and
aggregate data with public records

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paulie_a
As someone who worked in the real estate industry and was actually a licensed
realtor (but never an actual sales agent) I can understand why. Zillow is
terrible. Most realtors are equally terrible sometimes probably worse. But I
can understand the frustration for actually qualified agents losing a listing
because "the internet said otherwise"

TLDR: Zillow is garbage, Realtors(tm) are generally bad at their jobs.

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greghague
You're wrong about Realtors. Most work 7 days a week and care deeply about
their clients. Want to pick on someone, make it me. I paid 100% for the
StopZillow website because Zillow built its brand on the back of Realtors'
listings and now stabs them in the back. I'm a little guy compared to Zillow,
but just watch me shove it in their face. Greg Hague, The Real Estate Maverick

~~~
loco5niner
> 7 days a week

... but how many hours in a day, I wonder

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ejcx
I have a friend who does real estate in DC who pays Zillow thousands per month
to be on the forefront of all the incoming leads. It reminds me a ton of Yelp.

Seems to me like the realtors are probably right, zillow is throwing their
weight around to make more money, but realtors are very incentivized to fight
back against zillow.

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esaym
This[1] seems to be a better overview

In short, right now only two investment firms are allowed to purchase homes
using the instant feature. So basically a giant corporation buying up homes
for cheap. Sux

[1] [https://www.inman.com/2017/05/26/everything-you-need-to-
know...](https://www.inman.com/2017/05/26/everything-you-need-to-know-about-
zillow-instant-offers/)

~~~
r00fus
I saw 15 PI firms listed in the article - but the rest is subscription-blocked
for me.

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cpwright
Just because Zillow facilitates a connection between the buyer/seller doesn't
mean the seller isn't going to have an attorney. Heck, in NY even the lending
bank has an attorney (which the buyer pays for).

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ucarion
Is there any credence to the claim that Zillow's "zestimates" are frequently
inaccurate? If not, then I don't see any legitimacy behind this movement.

Edit: I ask because the populist-y invective on this site raises red flags for
me, but I also don't know anything about this industry.

~~~
Spooky23
It varies a lot in quality. In the case of my own home, which is an urban home
on a block with different housing types, it varies 6-7% from one month to
another, over relies on tax assessment data, and doesn't understand
neighborhoods. Even a cheap paid tool will generate a better value estimate.

It's pretty good in subdivisions. Then again, anyone can figure that out.

"Instant offers" is the online equivalent of those "we buy houses" signs that
you see in some areas. It's a borderline predatory practice and makes you
question the real reasoning behind doing it. They probably built it for some
real estate state investment pool that bought up distressed property during
the recession.

~~~
r00fus
What about the problem where Zillow is sometimes itself used as a source for
AVM [1]?

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_valuation_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_valuation_model)

~~~
Spooky23
That seems incredibly lazy to me!

I didn't see what the package was, but when I recently refinanced, the bank
used software that understood neighborhood overlays and could find comps on
similar properties. It also listed similar but excluded comps and the reason
why. (Ie bigger/smaller yard, garage, dead end, proximity to 4+ family, etc)
The only input required was a questionnaire from a drive-by condition
evaluation.

That appraisal was within a $5k error bar compared to informal assessments
that I had done independently with 3 real estate people.

------
ryandvm
Middleman unhappy with being bypassed - film at 11...

~~~
kusha
Isn't this more like replaced instead of bypassed?

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gadjo95
Well they want to improve their model now: [https://www.kaggle.com/c/zillow-
prize-1](https://www.kaggle.com/c/zillow-prize-1)

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greghague
You're out of line criticizing Realtors. Don't presume until you stand in
their shoes. Most work their butt off 7 days a week and care deeply about
their clients. You want to criticize someone, pick me. I paid 100% for the
StopZillow website and movement because Zillow used Realtor listings to build
a brand and now stabs those Realtors in the back. Greg Hague, The Real Estate
Maverick

~~~
r00fus
> Zillow used Realtor listings to build a brand

Is this the MLS? Or is Zillow scraping realtor sites?

~~~
paulie_a
There is no single MLS, so basically they have to get data from the various
services located in any given market.

They typically paid for that access though I do know they were cut out of the
Milwaukee one a while back.

I think they were scraping data at one point (but I could be entirely off-base
there) At the end of the day, they are combing through public records, past
sales from MLS and in many cases retyped/copied and pasted by the real estate
agent.

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plessthanpt05
Honest question, how is this new aspect of zillow different from what opendoor
does?

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packetized
Shouldn't realtors just be forced to compete?

~~~
tyingq
Zillow isn't competing with realtors. It is, however, arguably giving low-ball
valuations on homes, which reduces the realtor commission amount.

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strathmeyer
I assume this is some sort of "stop Ashley Madison stunt?"

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iamacynic
being a realtor is a sales job. the good ones know this - they don't care
where the listings and the numbers come from, they do the footwork and hit the
phones hard, to sellers, to agents, to bankers, to government agencies, to
lawyers, to engineers, to appraisers, to everyone involved, which can
sometimes be wasted time, in order to get their clients into successful deals
first, meaning FAST.

when i was buying my place my realtor was sending me links from zillow,
redfin, his MLS, his agency's private listings, even fucking craigslist,
everything. he would send me stuff on weekends, after hours, even midnight. i
culled the list down and he spent time setting up a viewing on _every single
one_ i asked for. the more listings the better, in his eyes. i referred him to
2 of my friends, both of whom bought places through him also.

