Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com – Real Estate Information or Misleading Information
Listing syndicate websites like Zillow.com, Trulia.com and Realtor.com and many more offer information to the public regarding real estate. But much of this information might be misleading and false. These very popular websites have taken off and are very popular. They do offer great information and have many helpful tools, but there’s also a side to these real estate sites that many are not aware of. And it seems the information these real estate site provide are now being questioned by experts.
Zillow and Trulia exist to make money. Period. They make money by selling advertisements to Realtors. These long-term contracts paid out by Realtors to gain leads and exposure. These Realtor are touted as being the experts in the area. But those experts are the ones willing to pay the most for those advertised spots. They might be experts and they might not. But Zillow and Trulia are willing to take their money either way. I don’t mind that, what bothers me is the misleading information that these site provide regarding real estate information.
My hat’s off to those willing to question these real estate websites and take a stand.
Regards,
Charlie
Hi Charlie – Brad from Zillow here. I can appreciate the concern about “inaccuracy” because I see it all across the web and on articles and blog posts all the time.
I just want to clarify an inaccuracy in your second to last sentence above. Zillow invests massive resources in making our listings as accurate as possible. All of our listings information comes from partners who feed us their listings, such as MLS’s, brokerages and individual agents.
Zillow obtains listings from multiple sources which include a direct agent feed, broker/franchise feed, a MLS feed, and finally third party syndicators.
Hope this is useful and helpful to you and your readers.
Brad – thanks for shedding more light on this topic. I do feel that Zillow and other mean well, and that the information posted is only as accurate as the supplier of the information. But taking information and feeds from so many sources it’s impossible to monitor it all. Heck, I find inaccuracies all the time by agents in my small MLS. Thus, you can’t always trust the information given. But your site and others have such a influence (high PR ratings) on the general public that this influence and information is more times than not considered “factual” when in fact it may not be.
Regards,
Charlie
Hey Charlie – I appreciate your response. I wanted to also point out that Greg Schwartz just posted an article regarding how Zillow works with Listing agents. I know others will be interested in this too: http://www.zillow.com/blog/2012-02-03/how-zillow-works-with-listing-agents/