Watch the video of Allan Dalton of Realtor.com and Lloyd Frink of Zillow.com during their panel discussion at the California Association of Realtors annual convention here.
Via Ris Media
Update:
This was a three person panel which included Brad Inman of Inman news who provided some terrific commentary which some may have overlooked. Classic Inman!
Downloading the Video, I will reply for comments
thanks
ray - it sure is interesting.
Thanks for posting this. Yes interesting. It’s easy to see why our industry is in the state of flux that it is.
Man, there is such a lack of professionalism in Dalton’s statements that it boggles the mind he has piloted a company as big as Realtor.com as long as he has.
I think Dalton knew exactly what he was doing and saying when he launched his diatribe against Zillow.
Remember he was speaking to a room filled with Realtors and his words played well to them ( I even wanted to clap once or twice)
We met & spoke with Allan Dalton at the Inman NYC Connect Conference last year in NYC and we witnessed a similar tirade on a panel there. He knows how to play to the hometown crowd and grab headlines. He’s had a lot of practice.
This is nuts. I just finished watching. Although I can see his angle and sympathize with many of his concerns, it wasn’t delivered properly at all. We are all for Realtor’s and our company serves the “professional” condo industry, we support the real estate profession to the fullest and believe in technology changing this industry in a “good” way. Zillow will cater to the full service real estate community in some fashion, I am certain of it, and at the end of the day I believe the “service” of Real Estate will be more efficient, professional & accurate with the help of Zillow (when they come out of beta).
Zillow has to get Realtor data period. Or its credability will always be called into question.
Dalton is a master of riling up the home crowd. In a more neutral setting, I’m not sure how he would have performed. All of his complaints about Zillow finally made sense in the context of Lloyd Frink’s stating that Zillow had overtaken Realtor.com in the San Francisco market and was number 2, behind Realtor.com, in LA and San Diego.
Dalton’s behavior was not because he doesn’t _get_ Zillow. He gets it, as he gets technology in real estate in general. His behavior was because he’s scared silly of what Zillow will do to his business.
Realtor.com had a huge multi-year lead over Zillow and blew it. To be fair, Realtor.com is beholden to its NAR masters, not exactly a fast-moving or consumer-centric organization, so it’s not surprising they’re falling behind.
If NAR and Realtor.com had played their cards right, there would have been no room for a new player like Zillow. Realtor.com would have understood long, long ago that there’s a thirst in the public for an informal pre-CMA estimate of home values and provided it — with more accurate and more timely data than what Zillow uses. Realtor.com’s hands were tied, however, with MLS restrictions such as on the one on displaying sold data, a restriction which Realtor.com is now finally (and rightfully) ignoring.
>>Realtor.com had a huge multi-year lead over Zillow and blew it. To be fair, Realtor.com is beholden to its NAR masters, not exactly a fast-moving or consumer-centric organization, so it’s not surprising they’re falling behind.
Bingo!!
But as I’m sure we have seen with other online products, the services end up getting better over time… even if that means Realtor.com dies in the process.
I hate to say it but the Membership needs to be on a crusade to re-establish itself as THE content provider again and quit trying to protect, protect, protect all the dang time. There are plenty of Members that I’m quite sick of protecting because they are only holding us all back.