Zillow Is Creating It’s Own Reality
Jim Duncan at Real Central VA blog asks a very interesting question in his post What if - Zillow is right?
I couldn’t agree more with his assessment. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if Zillow’s results are accurate. That’s not the point. For most people, close enough is good enough.
Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report recently coined a term “wikiality” to describe the state when enough people reach a consensus about a subject, it in fact then becomes reality…
I believe Zillow is doing just this. By spreading its Zestimates through as many mediums as possible, it’s in essence creating it’s own ‘Wikiality’. If enough people believe their Zestimate to be true (consumers, journalists, realtors, whomever) - then reality really can be altered. It just shows how maleable the wisdom of the crowds really is.
(And no, I’m not the nutjob from Oregon referred to in the video…)
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2 Comment(s)
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- From Ubertor Real Estate Blog » ZillowTalk | Aug 15, 2006
- From BloodhoundBlog - The weblog of BloodhoundRealty.com, an exceptional-service residential real estate brokerage in Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. | Aug 15, 2006
- From ReyEstate.com | Aug 30, 2006
jf.sellsius | Aug 15, 2006 | Reply
Let’s assume a Zestimate is “close enough”.
A broker CMA is also “close enough”. Now what? It becomes marketing to the consumer the comparative value of 2 “close enoughs” in the entire real estate transaction–value being only the starting point. The end is an actual sale.
A broker’s “close enough” should trump (pun) zillow’s “close enough” if brokers market themselves as giving more with their CE, such as added services, negotiation skills, factoring “unzillowables” (our term), etc. Real estate is about a “transaction”– a value, whether zillowed or CMA, will not buy or sell a house. People do.
See our poll results so far. It is interesting how buyers see zillow differently than sellers.
http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/?p=1718
Greg | Aug 16, 2006 | Reply
Interesting thing about it is- I trust Zillow’s stats, and to some extent, information, more than NAR’s already- less politics involved and don’t tell me Zillow is a commercial enterprise, like NAR is not…