Yahoo & Zillow - Strange Bedfellows?
Zillow, the new home valuation "Vortal" has inked a deal with Yahoo Real estate to provide it's estimation tool to Yahoo users. Having followed the Zillow issue closely I am wondering how this is going to play in the Realtor community, specifically with Prudential. Prudential has an exclusive arrangement with Yahoo for their resale home search functionality. Go search for a listing on Yahoo, in most cases you will be immediately re-directed to a Prudential site (oddly enough when I tried this today I was redirected to a page with Prudential Logo that said the site was being updated and gave no indication when it would be operational again). The opinions I have seen regarding Zillow from agents and brokers runs the gamut from pensive to "the lion is coming back over the hill". When the launch of Zillow generated poor valuation numbers, the Realtor community pounced on the opportunity to trash the service in message boards across the web. Will there be a credibility problem if a Prudential agent generates a lead from Yahoo and the consumer is empowered with valuation data that is way off the mark? It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. I know Joel over at The Future of Real Estate Marketing blog has a good working relationship with Zillow, maybe we can get him to ask a few questions about how they envision the indirect partnership that they now have with a large broker. Joel?
posted by Mike Price at 12:42 PM
1 Comments:
I think Zillow all along has welcomed relationships with the big brokers. The feelings aren't necessarily reciprocal, as you pointed out Mike.
I also wonder whether Prudential was consulted on this deal (my gut feeling is no).
But, right now I think there is enough of a firewall between the two services that I doubt the average consumer imply a connection.
If "Zillow this home" links started appearing on Prudential's listings I might start to get a little more concerned.
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