Real Estate Agents Just Got A Bit More Nervous

Mashable reports that Zillow is finally adding neighborhood detail to their real estate listings.

Some of these new community features include individual neighborhood pages, spanning over 130 cities in the US. For each neighborhood, you’ll of course find local demographic and real estate information, but they also act as mini communities in and of themselves, with the ability to also include photos, etc. There’s also a Home Q&A for the homes listed on the site, Zillow Discussions, Polls, and a personalize home page for registered users, that offers relevant information on a local level.

That's huge - and something that is coming with or without Zillow. Franki and I are looking at posting information about own condos, in the hopes that one day we can sell it using a blog instead of paying 6% commission.

But it's also problematic, because people contributing information online can be nasty - they can tell the truth or lies, and it's hard to manage. Some people will love it, and others will write information that makes it harder to sell houses.

But there's a big advantage to the process - as TechDirt explains. Zillow gets to talk about things that real estate agents by law cannot.

For various legal and ethical reasons, real estate agents aren't supposed to talk about certain details of a neighborhood, like demographics or crime rates, even though this stuff is pretty pertinent to would-be buyers. So in addition to its basic real estate data, Zillow plans to launch 6,500 new sites based around specific communities, where users can exchange information that they can't get from real estate agents.

I haven't decided if this is a good or bad thing. Overall, it's probably good for the consumer. But for the individual consumer, this could have the effect of losses (or gains) in the tens of thousands.

Welcome to your future. Do you have a voice online? Do you know how to search for information on the houses you're listing? Maybe you need some help.