There has been a tremendous quantity of commentary written about Zillow over the past week, with many great posts. Speculation abounds on how Zillow might or might not affect the traditional MLS model. I’ll tell you why I think Zillow is likely to trump Realtor.com and open doors for discounters.

Zillow has the potential to unseat the entrenched Realtor.com monopoly. I agree with Greg Swann that whoever wins the eyeballs wins. Zillow’s annoucement last week brought them more visitors than Realtor.com for the first time since their launch (per Alexa, admittedly a rough estimate).  Even before their annoucement, offering valuations and sales data but no listings, Zillow had obtained very respectable traffic. With listings, Zillow will whip Realtor.com in traffic and become a defacto site for real estate.

Whether agents like it or not, sellers are going to browse Zillow, and will be calling their agents asking why their house isn’t marked “For Sale”. Given the simplicity of listing a home on the site, and the fact that it’s absolutely free, what excuse could the agent make for not listing the seller’s home? Ardell does raise one objection, that posting a home that is listed at higher than Zillow valuation is somehow a bad thing. I respect her opinion, but personally don’t see what the big deal is.

Zillow’s success could be a boon to discounters and alternative business models. In my experience, anti-competitive practices, and sellers perception of such practices, are a major obstacle to alternative business models. Sellers who understand and otherwise appreciate an alternative model will list with a traditional broker and pay thousands of dollars extra in commission if they fear their home is going to be blackballed. Zillow as a defacto place for buyers to find homes could go a long way to assuring sellers that interested buyers will find their home, no matter what agents think.

Recent history has already shown this. The success of non-traditionals over the past ten years has coincided with the popularity of the internet. The ‘net, even through flawed sites such as Realtor.com, allowed buyers to take control by doing their own research online. Buyers no longer had to go to the agent with the MLS book to get information. This made it much harder for unethical agents to steer buyers to particular homes.

In my market area, I perceive agents as having limited influence over which homes buyers see and choose to purchase. The problem for non-traditionals is that agents still say that they are in control of buyers. It’s up to us non-traditionals to show sellers that buyers are in the driver’s seat now. By putting even more control in the hands of buyers and sellers, Zillow is on our side.