Zillow Retreats??

It turns out that Zillow's newest feature "Tell Us a Home's For Sale", caused so much controversy that they decided to turn it off.  A post by Jonathan Washburn at Active Rain generated over 70 responses in a little less than a day and a lot of them were negative.  They pointed out possible rules violations and the implications for agents who abused the new tool.  Read through the comments to see how agents responded. 

Several posts on real estate blogs also look at the implications of the new Zillow, but from a couple of different angles.  Check out Sellsius and FoREM. 

Once again, Zillow has managed to create a hailstorm of publicity in the "blogosphere".  Do you think their latest upgrades and the ensuing storm are calculated or accidental?

CORRECTION:

Zillow did not turn off their "Tell Us a Home's for Sale".  They just hide it so well it is difficult to find.  Instead of a link to the feature, you have to know the address of the house listed.  Then you need to hunt for the icon that takes you to the page where you enter the price.  Not that hiding it makes it any less controversial.  Maybe they should turn if off before someone gets hurt.

Comments

[David G from Zillow.com]

Hey Tony, it's David from Zillow.

Please correct your post: no features have been turned off. Where did you heard that? Also -- please do read the comments to both posts you mentioned - both posters were rather confused about what we deployed but I think we managed to set the record straight.

Please try out this feature and then let us know what you think.

David

[Tony Arko]

David, Sorry about that. I have already corrected it. I searched for about 15 minutes to find out how to do it and couldn't find a logical path to the feature. I then assumed you had for some reason disabled it. I now have it figured out and have used it several times. My question is who is going to update the prices when they change? I'm not going to have time to follow it manually.

[David G from Zillow.com]

Thanks Tony, much appreciated.

To answer your question; unlike posted listings which rely solely on the listing agents for updates, any one of our site's 4 million visitors can update these for sale postings. So, there's a good chance that the community will do a better job of keeping them fresh than what a listing agent alone can.