Put Pen to Paper - Zillow Predictions Anyone?
A great year end summary from Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CFO and VP of Marketing - make sure you read his post It’s a Wrap.
I think Spencer is pretty bang-on with his top 10 stories (I’ll let you read them over on his post). Inman News (my employer) also recently posted its Top real estate stories of 2007 too.
Let me try and summarize both.
Industry/Markets = doing bad. Technology/Innovation = doing well.
My guess is that 2008 is going to be a reconciling of these two forces. Forces that seem to be pulling further away from each other more and more.
In the spirit of New Year’s predictions, Spencer wraps his wrap with some thoughts about Zillow…
In 2008, Zillow will improve Zestimate accuracy; launch a mortgages product; significantly increase revenue and approach profitability; become the most visited real estate Web site in at least several key cities; cross the 1 million listings milestone; and much more.
Pretty bold predictions. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how they plan on attacking each.
I think the key item on that list (starts with a ‘P’) is the most questionable.
So my big prediction (and it’s a bit of a cop-out) is because of questions around profitability (and Z’s burn rate), we’re going to see more and more speculation on the fate of Real Estate 2.0’s highest profile player… Acquisition? IPO? (see The Fool thinks we should look out for…). I’m not sure that 2008 will see resolution any of those questions, but I suspect the chorus will begin to grow louder. Altos Research also thinks 2008 will be the year Rich Barton moves on.
So what are your Zillow predictions for 2008?
[poll=6]
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Greg Knowles | Dec 28, 2007 | Reply
I think they will continue to struggle with the accuracy of their estimates and the completeness of their information. If they are lucky they will get someone interested in purchasing them. They have built a good foundation, I’m just not convinced what they are trying to accomplish can be pulled off.
sidestepfan | Dec 28, 2007 | Reply
Layoffs at Z to prune the fat and bring on the next generation of managers and operators. It happens at every evoloving start-up and as you hit yr 3-4 and 150 employees, it’s different beast then 20 folks in a garage.
As it’s been reported, Sidestep did a significant RIF to get the # of employees down to look attractive enough for Kayak to buy them.
My prediction is that either Z or T slims down so that the other one can buy them for cash, much like the Sidestep-Kayak merger.
Zestimae accuracy is a fruitless crusade of a few. The real game is how much ad money (EZ Ads or listings or Google Ad Sense) can they start to generate to prove out a business model.
A more interesting product trend to watch out for is whether Z and T will feel pressure from their VCs to place interstitial ads and sponsored links in the heart of their product experiences (and interrupt the user experience) in order to start to make a buck.
Daniel Bates | Dec 30, 2007 | Reply
I haven’t visited Zillow since it was soon started. As a simple form of entertainment it serves to pass the time for a few minutes. As a useful tool for consumers and real estate agents it falls far short. I’m not sure who these millions of users are and what they are searching for, but I’m also not sure that Zillow can figure out a way to milk any more money out of them.
Andrew | Jan 2, 2008 | Reply
If they can change their pricing model, they could create a much larger customer base. Instead of paying for impressions or clicks, why not offer pay per lead? It’s much easier to test Zillow or sign a contract if the pricing model is based on performance e.g. $ per lead.