I remember splitting wood when I was a kid – putting the wedge in the center of the log, tapping it in and then *wham*! splitting it open with the sledgehammer. That’s what Google did this morning when they announced their new and improved real estate search and uploading part of Google Base. (via CRT)
I’ve been wrong before, but this is another step towards the obsolescence of the MLS as we know it. Those Realtors whose dependence on the MLS to make them successful had best start honing those skills and tidying up those resumés.
Google are more innovative, more focused and more able to adapt.
From a post I made a few months ago:
What if – Google bought Zillow? Just a thought.
Mark it down.
Technorati Tags: realtor.com, real estate, mls, realtor
The writing is on the wall. I have agreed with you in the past on this and still do. We are going ourselves in.
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Maybe I’m just stupid but;
My Blogger blog is free.
My Feedburner RSS feed is free
My Zookoda email system is free
My Sitemeter tracker is free
My Google RSS reader is free
My multiple blog hubs (Digg etc) are all free
All the sites like Zillow.com, Realtor.com etc are all free.
Considering that so much of what is on the MLS’s are public information and attempts to advertise homes for sale, I’m actually at a loss as to how we don’t already have a National free, public access “MLS” system.
The national fee MLS is doing away with newspapers, not realtors though.
Google still scares me, however. Who is to say that, in three years (give or take) when/if they win this battle to collect all of the real estate information – they don’t flip a switch and start charging fees to buyers/sellers/public to list? Or start selling leads to Realtors, etc.?
Once they become ubiquitous, who will stop them? As I write this, I think of an analogy to ATMs. At first they were free. Once everybody used them and depended on them, banks were/are able to get away with charging exorbitant fees for access to our own money. (I think that analogy works)
So far, the best data remains “for-fee.”
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I’ll try this new Google service for my Real Estate site and let you know if I notice any traffic impovement.