A Few Thoughts on RealEstate.com
As a skeptic that millennials need another portal, I said I’d withhold judgement until I saw the product. Yesterday, I had a few minutes to take a look at the new RealEstate.com.
It seems the main differentiator is searching by cost. An “All-In Monthly Pricing” module is shown on all property detail pages:
As a millennial who hasn’t bought a home yet, I do see value in a clear cost breakdown like this (as long as its accurate).
Part of the simplified search is the ability to search by budget, which factors in down payment and your monthly budget. I like that feature, but I’m not sure it’s enough by itself to draw a millennial home buyer audience.
Aside from that, the portal seems like just another barebones IDX search site. I think my gut is correct; the long term goal of the portal is to own another piece of organic SEO real estate for “city + real estate / city + homes for sale” terms across the country (which would otherwise be controlled by brokerages). With their in house marketing team and broad portfolio of domains with major SEO power/history, they obviously hold a significant advantage when it comes to climbing the rankings fairly quickly.
As a millennial, I still find “Zillow” to be a much cooler/sexier brand than realestate.com. Maybe that’s just me.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 13:07h, 03 MayI agree it seems like SEO is important as they have a search at the bottom by state and as you drill down you realize it is totally useless for anything other than a search engine. The cities are not in any particular order, and then once you finally get down to the homes all you have is an address which tells you nothing about the home.
That utility score is interesting too. It has the house for sale next to me at $13,957 per month for the gas expense. I am paying $100 something per month for gas so $13,957 sounds a bit on the high side. LOL
One thing where Zillow can beat agents is they have no liability. If I tell a client their monthly cost or closing cost is X amount and it is way off, the client is going to be very upset at me and might even include that in a lawsuit.
I have had closing cost estimates on my site for years, and I give details of how I come up with it and it is estimated on the high side. This reduces my liability as they won’t sue because their closing cost was not as much as I estimated.
As Zillow never represents clients they won’t be sued for inaccurate information, so it gives them more confidence to make these estimates without any consequences.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 14:29h, 03 May“One thing where Zillow can beat agents is they have no liability.”
Yup. Might as well get used to it, that’s not going to change anytime soon.