Marin County Real Estate

    A great philosopher once said  that all movements have three periods.  The first phase is change as perceived as necessary.   The internet became necessary because people had access to limited information.  There was little transparency, and the consumer had no voice.  Oftentimes the consumer was poorly treated.   The second phase perceives change as an improvement.  The third phase, that we’re currently experiencing, is a correction period.
   Real Estate has had the longest robust market in the history of the country, based on the internet.  What will the impact of this be as the market  passes through various adjustments that differ from state to state, and town to town?  With the arrival of Zillow.com, and other similar home valuation web sites , will the public be better served?
   Lloyd Frink, co-founder and President of Zillow.com admits that the margin of error with Zillow.com is 7.2 percent.  In the Bay Area ,where neighborhoods are quite diverse and less uniform, that margin of error is much greater.  And now that Zillow.com has recently added the ability for homeowners to modify the facts of their home, and create their own “Zestimate” it’s anybody’s guess.
   Allen Dalton, the President of Realtor.com says, ” the notion of suggesting to people that they can find out what their home is worth without a Realtor offends me.  Something as critical and vital as your number one asset, and then treat it in a parlor game-type of fashion?  The site Zillow.com says that they’re going to give consumers an idea of what their home is worth.  I’m convinced that home sellers already have an idea, so I don’t think value is being inserted.  Zillow.com wants you to believe that you can predetermine what the asset is worth before a Realor’s value is inserted into the proposition.  We are talking about different business models and different consequences.” 
    My personal experience with Zillow.com’s Zestimates for homes in Marin County is that so far, Zillow has been sometimes so off the mark, that at best it’s entertainment   New subdivions seem to be where Zillow does best in Marin.  Where all the homes were built by the same builder,and the floor plans are simiilar.  I wonder what the Appraisal industry and Banks think about Zillow?   I think we are a long way from where you can walk into a bank with a Zestimate (that you may have modified) and have the Bank give you a loan.  
    What do you think?
   
Marin County Real Estate Blog …. the power of the Internet

Marin County Real Estate enters the Blogosphere

Blogging has hit the real estate industry…and it just may upend a marketplace known for inefficiency and restricted information.

   There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of blogs covering real estate and they shine unfiltered lights on their subjects, reporting market gossip, innuendo, facts, opinion, virutally anything.

   ”Blogs are telling like it is at the street level,” said Bran Inman of Inman News, a large real estate news service, Inman said real estate blogging began in the Bay Area, took hold in New York and has now spread nationally.

   For example, bloggers may expose defects at new developments or buildings such as roof leaks or heating system inadequacies or shoddy workmanship of maintenance.  They may warn buyers away from dishonest or incompetent brokers or overpriced new housing. They can let buyers know that a neighborhood may not be safe, that an area floods every spring, or that jets fly directly overhead when the west wind blows.

   It’s not all negative though. “Comments on our posts often talk about how great a neighborhood is or praise brokers or landlords,” said Jake Dobkin,  a publisher of sites covering 15 cities.

   Blogs also help even the playing field for consumers. Traditionally, only professionals could get full access to comparable prices and property conditions.  “Blogs add information – they level the playing field for consumers” says Dobkin.

   Alexis Palmer operations head for Curbed.com, which covers New York and Los Angeles, says the strength of these sites is that they tell people more about the areas they may be considering moving into. “You can find out about the neighborhood’s character,” she said, “what kinds of restarurants, stores, and clubs are there.”

   The info comes from people like you. “Normally, in real estate, most of the information available comes from those representing the sale of properties,”said Palmer. “They have a different agenda than the consumer.”

   And, even though on many blogs anyone can post and there is little fact checking or test for accuracy, that doesn’t mean the information is too untrustworthy. “You get robust corrections from the community of readers,”said Palmer.

   It’s not just local real estate or neighborhood conditions that the bloggosphere highlights.  Some, like real estate research provider Jonathan Miller, take on different national issues.

   Insiders believe that blog sites empower consumers, enabling them to make better choices, obtain services at a better price, and find better service providers.

www.MarinRealEstateblog.com

www.MarkLomas.com

www.MarinCountyDirectory.com

Marin County Real Estate

Blogging and Real Estate     Finally, a forum/methodology for the Professional Realtor and the General Public to exchange ideas in a healthy virtual enviroment.  This will benefit the real estate industry’s relationship with the public by allowing a Town Hall like atmosphere for the free exchange of ideas while providing information that conventional media formats have been unable or unwilling to provide.     What is a weblog? A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the web. Weblogs express as many different subjects and opinions as there are people writing them. Some blogs are highly influential and have enormous readership while others are primarily intended for a close circle of family and friends.      The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a ‘conversation’ than to a library — which is how the Web has often been described in the past. With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the Web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants.     This is why the blogging phenomenon and other forms of unfettered expression on the Web is often called the rise of the participant economy.      A few years ago, Web search was revolutionized by a simple but profound idea — that the relevance of a site can be determined by the number of other sites that link to it, and thus consider it ‘important.’ In the world of blogs, hyperlinks are even more significant, since bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, which creates the sense of timeliness and connectedness one would have in a conversation. So Technorati tracks the number of links, and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging. Because Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.There are about 75,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers update their weblogs regularly; there are about 1.2 million posts daily, or about 50,000 blog updates an hour.A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLOGS1997            The term “Weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger, editor of the blog Robot Wisdom on December 171999            April/May   Peter Merholz, who blogs at peterme.com is the first to use the verb ‘blog’ by dividing the                     weblog in the words, “we blog”                    August/ a tiny company in San Francisco called Pyra Labs creates Blogger.  It is the first internet of                     based, free, and easy to use blog creation tools that will spark the explosive growth of the                    Blogosphere.                    December/   Rusty Foster debuts Scoop.  This open source “collaborative media application”                     allows the reader of a web site to also produce its content.  Markos Moulitsas Zuniga will later                    use it to transform DailyKos from an individual blog into a mega-community web site.2000            November/ freelance journalist Josh Marshall starts TalkingPointsMemo in the midst of the 2000                     election recount controversy2002            May/ Moulitsas begins blogging at DailyKos.  He is one of the many political bloggers who begin                    self-publishing in response to the 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.                    November: David Sifry founds Technorati, a real time search engine that tracks what’s going on                    in the Blogosphere.2003            March/ The Oxford English Dictionary includes the word weblog and we-blogger.      2004            January/ Ana Marie Cox launches Wonkette, which dishes D.C. gossip. Wonkette belongs to         Gawker                    Media, an online company founded by Nick Denton and considered to be the most visible and                     successful blog orientated media company.