Zillow to Acquire Trulia and Who Cares About Realtor.com?

You can put all of those rumors to rest about Zillow acquiring Trulia because the official Zillow press release came out this morning that Zillow is indeed intending to take over Trulia in exchange for stock valued at $3.5 billion. As a consumer, you might not notice much difference as both websites will continue to operate as they always have, albeit, the merger should improve Trulia.

My own Sacramento listings on Trulia are tangled up and a mess. Still, I am excited about the news of Zillow to acquire Trulia. I’ve talked with customer service reps who seem to be following a revolving door and nobody has been able to fix the problem. In some instances, I can’t feature my listings as a special promotion. Some of the other problems are:

• Photos and marketing comments vanish after a listing moves into pending status
• No conformity among links to property sites
• Status modifiers are not active on all listings
• Photos uploads are slow and clunky
• Updates are not immediate and require 24+ hours

And that just breaks the surface. So, if you see that stuff on Trulia, don’t blame me. At times I may need to perform manual manipulation of my listings into Trulia if I want them to appear on my profile at all, but I’m not really complaining. Sometimes, I get clients who gripe and want to know why real estate agents don’t routinely try to update data on other companies’ websites but we don’t own those websites. They are owned by corporations. They may supplement our business a bit and provide a friendly service to the public but they are not our personal websites.

Some real estate agents around the country are freaking out over the intended purchase, they are not happy that to hear Zillow to acquire Trulia. They believe Zillow wants their jobs, their companies, their business and is out to slice their necks off like the top of a pineapple in one fell swoop. Zillow is not King Kong and we are not Jessica Langs. Paranoia has its place — why aren’t they more worried, for example, about Google world domination? BTW, you notice that nobody is talking about Realtor.com. Does anybody even use that website anymore?

I just go about my business, selling homes in Sacramento as a Sacramento real estate agent. If I had to pick a favorite website though, it would be Zillow, even though its computer-generated Z-estimates cause my clients so much frustration — because it makes my job even more important. It’s not a conflict. I bring extreme value to the table. Real estate still requires a human touch and expertise.