Real Estate Marketing Blog

Zillow Gets Some FTC

Almost overnight Expedia made the idea of a travel agent so 1980. The Travel Industry may have acquiesced to the designs of Expedia.com that forever changed the landscape of the travel business.

However, the real estate industry is not going down without a fight.

National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC,) which has just filed a consumer protection complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that "Internet financial services and real estate provider Zillow.com is misleading consumers, real estate professionals and financial service providers in on-line home valuations.

NCRC charges Zillow with falsely representing to the public that its on-line valuations are within ten percent of the home selling price when the company really has "less than a 30 percent accuracy rate when offering the valuations for public consumption." The result for consumers, says John Taylor, NCRC president and CEO, is that "consumers are already at risk of being over extended due to the increased access to non-traditional loans, Zillow's misinformation exacerbates the situation.

Recently at a Realtor Convention in Long Beach, California, the Zillow co-founder promised that Zillow was not coming out be a Realtor killer. This is interesting as the pre-launch hype of Zillow was about it indeed replacing the need for Realtors.

I am not sure if this was by design, but it did get the company the publicity it needed to already become a common verb. Like we all might "Google it", apparently we now can "Zillow it".

As any realty agent learns in their first week is that the public records are wrought with an abundance of BAD information. Apparently Zillow or their Angel Investors did not look into this mere formality.

So when the blogsphere started harping about their bad data (yours truely included), all of a sudden Zillow realized they had to get cozey with Realtors.

They had no choice. Currently the only way they can have accurate data is by getting Board of Realtors sales records.

While the Boards have been only too happy to whore their(your)  data to the online world, they have kept the sale data in a "big locked box" (to quote a past Presidential Candidate ;-)

So what started out as a tremendous marketing lesson in publicity, is becoming a lesson in Spin, as Zillow fights to stay credible, while the Industry isn't so willing to let that happen.

Real Estate Agents Future

We just posted the 2nd expert real estate interview today. Some very mind twisting topics ranging from lowered commissions to comparisions of a Realtor to a Slurpey at 7-11.

Real Estate Listings Comments

Get Your Website Fattened Up

On over at the Zip Realty blog they mentioned their new commentary system whereby their viewer can comment on a house.

Some of the commentary that the post mentions went as so:

“Not a very clean home!  Maybe the realtor should get a dictionary, as he can't spell!”...“are the drug users who drink in this bar included in the price” .....“Wow! what idiot would buy this at this price???”...“This listing is a joke, right?”...“The photos listed on this donot(sic) show anything of the CONDIMium(sic), just the TREES and PLANTS looks like a JUNGLE HOME Advertisment(sic)   for Tarzan and Jane”...“…Unless you want to pay for his retirement, otherwise, "lowball" him an offer or move on to other house…”....“There has(sic) been 2 deaths in this home.”

Commentary has been the rage ever since the notion of "thin" pages was bantered about in the online marketing world. A thin page or site is basically a static non changing page/site.

As an example when I post this article you are reading here, someone might post a comment. That comment adds to the content of this post. Then, maybe three days later the page changes again as someone else comments to the post.

The page is fattening up with richer and richer content as the commentary adds to the texture of the original post.

Same idea with Amazon's customer commentary, and sites like Ecommerce and Travel sites where you can add your take on the subject.

This is what Web 2.0 is supposed to be all about. Consumer generated content.

Hmmm. That is where practicality and an few programmers pipe dream diverge. Because, many consumers are just plain stupid! As Mr. Forrest Gump said, "stupid is what stupid does."

Stupid comments=stupid page? Do you want that crap on your listings page? Do you want your client seeing that crap about their home on anyones listings page?

But the real issue I see is two fold:

1. Digital Graffiti-Kids and just stupid people using your resources to ruin your page. I guess you can monitor that like you do spam on a blog.
2. Liability-I am not sure if I want to run the engine that generates the poor disparaging commentary on a home. The idea is to sell it. Not leave it up for a vote of people that have nothing better to do, but write commentary about home listings. The only vote that matters is the ballot called the Offer Form.Man I can just imagine the next pet project in law offices across the country.

Real Estate Seo Myths

The 10 Myths about Real Estate SEO

1. PageRank & Metatags are everything
2. A top ten position will solve all your sales problems
3. SEO is metatag manipulation
4. Content is King
5. The engines love blogs more than regular webpages
6. Get ranked for the top 20 most volumnous words and you will be successful
7. If you just get rankings and Traffic you will be Successful
8. SEO is the single most important action  you can do for your website
9. Its all about more links!
10. There are magical shortcuts to getting SEO traffic

Over the next few days I will elaborate on each of the 10 SEO myths.

Google Pinger

Google Blog

I missed this last week. Google has recently added the ability to ping their blog engine. The ping link is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 .

IE7

Just installed IE7. This is Microsofts preview into what the new OS will be like.

It reminds me of a poor copy of Firefox with a Mac like interface.

Well, I am now on a trek to find a way to uninstall IE7 as it sucking my 1 Gig of Ram and shredding it to pieces. This thing is a memory Hog. Firefox and Opera are looking better by the minute.

Thought I would warn you and save you my pain. If you have had similar or great results with Internet Explorer 7 please leave a comment.

Tag: Internet Explorer IE7

Goofy Google

I was doing a search yesterday and thought it pretty bad that everyones favorite search engine-Google. Seemed to think that a "Parked Domain" site should be positioned in the top 10 for a competitive search.

When I queried the term "Redondo Beach Condos", the number three position was for a site that is a parked domain.

I think they call that "relevancy". Or not.

I ran the search again just before publishing this search and it is still there.

Tags: Real Estate Google

Housing Slump Over

Greenspan Declares Better Times Ahead

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First off let me state blogging rule number one: Do not edit your post in the online editor! Use a local PC editor first then copy and paste. The blog below will be my second post about this. But the first one was lost as I pushed publish, and I guess the digital gods did not like my timing. Poof! gone. No post. No saved post either. That was my fault and that was last night. I gave up to rewrite this with more optimistic eyes this AM.
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Ex-Federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan declared to an economic panel in Calgary, Canada, sponsored by BMO Financial Group.

The U.S. housing market appears to be emerging from its recent travails and the "worst may well be over"..... "I suspect that we are coming to the end of this downtrend, as applications for new mortgages, the most important series, have flattened out.".... "There is a good chance of coming out of this in good shape, but average housing prices are likely to be down this year relative to 2005. I don't know, but I think the worst of this may well be over," he added.

See the whole article and find out how you can influence your marketplace.

The Heist

I recently posted about the Heist. A documentary where the host basically brainswashed normal everyday people to Rob a bank.

Dave Lakhani of Bold Approach wrote about the show and discusses The Heist was a great example of how persuasion and influence can work when you follow very specific principles and properly identify and influence your audience.

In every talk I have heard him give, Dave draws the contrast of Influence and Manipulation. He knows definitely knows how influence works. Check out his interpretation of the show, and how the presenter brainswashed these people.

Housing Data from the Census

The Government has released their recent data from the Census on Housing.

Some good stuff in there for developers to compile for Real Estate sites.