Review from the Road

One of the great things about finally being “live” is that our phones have been ringing off the hook.  By and large, the reception has been fantastic – much better than I had anticipated. 

One thing is for sure, it’s been a number of years since I have traveled as much as I have over the past month.  While my wife and kids don’t love the fact that I’m away, it has proven to be incredibly valuable.

The nature of the conversations was us talking to people in the real estate industry about what we were doing several days before our actual beta launch.  I logged an incredible number of miles and ran up a huge phone bill.  But, it was worth it to try and get our message out.  I apologize to all of you who we missed.

We talked with people inside the real estate and mortgage industries about what we were trying to accomplish and, equally important, what we weren’t trying to accomplish.  Without question, there was a lot less trepidation with the folks from the mortgage industry.  They quickly saw Zillow.com as an avenue to reach out to consumers who might be great candidates for home equity, refinance and purchase loans.  They really liked the ability to geo target and to slice the market by home values.

The people in the real estate industry were more reserved.  Based on a number of focus groups and interviews we had done with agents and brokers across the country, we were not surprised.  We were (pleasantly) surprised, however, that most of the people we met with concluded that we were more of a complement, than competitor.

Some of the things I heard most frequently (and continue to hear) include:
1. “This is a cool site.  It’s a clean design, great search and great UI (user interface).”  Of course, I thanked them profusely and then hurriedly told my development teams here in Seattle who had been working on the product 20 hours a day for many months running.  It was a great initial validation.
2. “Hmmm, this is what I do (value homes).” I expected this one.  We heard it a number of times in the early focus groups we had done.  What I tend to say in this case is that what we are doing is providing an estimate of value.  A starting point, if you will.  And, we provide tools like My Zestimator to help consumers revise the value we have provided.  The Zestimate is not intended to take the place of a professional CMA nor appraisal.  It is intended to help consumers become more informed and educated in the process – to get an edge.  The other big point in this comment and question centers on the data.  Many people I have talked to like the fact that it is hard to come by and, therefore, consumers come to them to get it and to interpret it.   I get the concept.  Really, I do.  However, these same people almost all understand that this won’t persist.  This data will get out.  County sites are doing it.  Many other Internet sites are doing it.  The real question becomes how one responds to this inevitable evolution and exposure of home data.
3. “What is your business model… really?”  I love this one.  Google and Yahoo have been pretty good at generating ad revenues.  I’m not saying we’re the next thing, but I do think we can build a very meaningful business by doing what’s right for consumers.  The rest will follow.  I believe, passionately, that Zillow.com will be a great place for real estate professionals to connect with consumers who are looking for their services (no, not as a lead generator or one who tries to take a large referral fee).  We don’t want to be an agent.  We will leave that to the qualified people in the profession.  We like scale.  We like technology.  We like consumer-focused Web businesses.  We like the media business.  We think this will work – for consumers and real estate professionals.
4. “Can we have an exclusive?  Will you provide this as a white label?”  We won’t do exclusives.  My (our) feeling is that they tend to never work well for either party.  We are thinking of lots of different ways, however, to make our content more relevant to partners.  We also have lots of opportunity for people to advertise on our site.  While we’re building up our base of advertisers, the early adopters have already enjoyed a virtual exclusive with millions of ad impressions.
5. “Real estate is not travel.”  It’s not.  We agree.  See Spencer’s post. 

It’s been a lot of fun so far.  As we used to say at Amazon: “It’s Day 1”.