The backlash against Zillow & Co.

Jeffrey Rubin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:02:00 GMT

It used to be a given for anyone selling a house that a real-estate agent would put the listing on national real-estate aggregator websites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com to maximize exposure and sell the home quickly. But that could be changing fast as aggregators and agents face off.
Since 2005 or so, real-estate agents have shared data about homes they have for sale with those national sites, which have millions of visitors (Zillow, for example, had 32 million last month). But even though the sites have grown, sales haven't in the distressed housing market, and some agents believe the sites may not be helping. They accuse the sites of engaging in practices that give buyers inaccurate information that may hurt sales.
Among their complaints are that the sites allow any agent, for a fee, to have his or her name and photo appear prominently beside the homes listed for sale in a given region, even if the person in picture isn't the agent representing the seller. In reality, the agent in the photo may know little about the property or the neighborhood where the house is located, frustrating customers' efforts to get accurate answers, according to a report last year by real-estate consulting firm Clareity.
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What do you think? Do you think that sites such as Zillow and Realtor.com are inaccurate?

Jeffrey Rubin : realtor.com

The backlash against Zillow & Co.