[lr4444lr]

Don't sell short what those companies did for buyers: they freed them from the gatekeeper of a broker. No disrespect to brokers - they're great for sellers and I happily used one - but the analytics and search and sheer awareness of what was on the market they offered to the home buyer was revolutionary IMHO.

[alistairSH]

Agreed. While Redfin, Realtor.com, etc didn't cut a realtor out of my RE transactions (1 purchase a decade ago, then 1 sale + 1 purchase last year), they did do a good job showing me what was on the market. And not just at a single point in time (when I was actively shopping), but over years, so I could see neighborhoods that were smaller or had less turnover. While actively searching, the often gave me a heads up as to what was coming on the market in the upcoming week - I wasn't at the mercy of the RE agent calling me with new listings.

Unfortunately, agents in my area still take a pretty standard % of any transaction, so those tech sites haven't made a dent in the cost of the transaction.

[ghaff]

Everything from Zillow to online property listings to Google StreetView to just the Web generally probably makes it hugely easier to get a feel for the market, find properties, and scout locations than when I bought my house. But, based on friends who have bought and sold relatively recently, I'm not sure the process of actually making a purchase is much easier or cheaper and that's where the stress really lies. (Well, that and just inflated property values in locations many consider prime.)

[shostack]

How did you go about assessing the evolution of a neighborhood over time? Do any of them have visualization tools specifically for that?

[alistairSH]

No specific tools, but many home listings stay online for years. And any single home’s sale history is online too. Between the two, you can see how much a lake view is worth relative to the house one row away, or how quickly a neighborhood recovered from 2008, or the high and low sales over the last few years, etc.

[AlexandrB]

> they freed them from the gatekeeper of a broker

The thing is, there were many brokers - it was a distributed system. In the scenario where Zillow is wildly successful it will become a monolithic gatekeeper to real estate transactions - a highly centralized system.

It's pretty ironic that the internet has become such a centralizing force, when its promise was to radically decentralize everything.

[ghaff]

Buyers have a lot more information. When I bought my house 25 years or so ago, I can't tell you how many hours I wasted driving to some listing and discovering it wasn't for me for some reason before stepping foot out my car. On the other hand, I'm not sure to what degree real estate sales have truly been disrupted at the end of the day.