Zillow will suffer a slow death. Of course their traffic has increased, people want to know what the trend is and novice investors think this is a good tool. Most people are like sheep and this will be their watering hole. If they are using tax assesments ,which have yet to adjust for market conditions. As well as comparable sales, which will soon consist mostly of foreclosed properties. How accurate can they really be? I give them another 10-16mos unless they charge consumers as well as people in the industry to get revenue. But even that will only extend their life a little longer, the Zillow idea is a good one but there is too much left out that they cant take into account.

I disagree 100%. They are very valuable because of thir HUGE web traffic. I will take that bet of 10-16 months and assure you they will either be acquired by another entity or will have fined tuned their model for more profitability.

I completely agree with Ray. Zillow has huge cash reserves ($80m+) and an online presence that all RE brokers would kill for. Their ad revenue will continue to increase as well as loan requests from visitors. As mentioned before, it's all about lead generation.

They will be bought out before they ever go under.

Online commerce is still evolving, I recall that Yahoo was going to bury the brokerages and MLS's. They haven't been relevant for some time and just laid off 35% of their staff.

Remember claims that online storefronts would cause classic retailers to close their brick and mortar operations? Now we have an expanded Nordstrom in T-town, so much for that.

I suspect their lack of accurate pricing will catch up to them with them sooner rather than later. You can be assured someone right now is working on a better product right now and online commerce will continue its evolution.

I remember claims that Yahoo was going out of business (and MANY other internet companies) in '01 after the dot-com bust.

Brick and mortar storefronts will always have a presence but they do need and online space as well or they are losing out on millions of visitors. Retailers like Nordstrom will always do well offline since most people will always prefer to try items on in store.

Trulia.com is actually doing quite well and still looking to hire during these times.

How will their lack of accurate pricing catch up with them? Everyone knows they are just starting points for determining a value. Obviously a real estate appraiser is still needed. (I will say they are almost dead on with the value of my home when looking a the recent comps)

I'm not educated in the nuances of e-commerce, it would seem to me that a hit on amazon versus a hit on zillow would produce different results. If I go to amazon website, chances are I'm going to buy something or at the very least I will compare a price. I don't think that zillow has that luxury. I love zillow, it makes your homework eaisier,however, what do they offer that is so unique? certainly not the property value estimates that are consistantly off from the real values. What can zillow offer me that I can't find in other places? I believe that zillow will fail due to their timing of entering the market place, however, one of the big brokerages will buy it, and have a great add on to their current business.

@againsthetide

Amazon and Zillow have COMPLETELY different business models that really can't be compared. Think about how much overhead Amazon and employees it takes to run such a company. They have over 17k+ employees, buildings and warehouses spread across the US, Europe and Asia.

You can ask the exact same questions about Amazon. What does Amazon offer that is so unique? What can Amazon offer that I can't find in other places? You can find the exact same things from a gazillion other retail places online AND offline ... Walmart, BestBuy, Barnes & Noble, etc. etc...

MANY experts and analysts expected Amazon to fail as well.

Zillow has a HUGE early advantage like Amazon did with it's business back in '95. You have to remember that Zillow has only been around 3-yrs. It took Amazon over 7-yrs before it even saw it's first net profitable qtr (and that is after bleeding A LOT of cash)

Zillow only has 105 employees, yet already has a major brand that everyone knows and TONS of eye balls in a HUGE financial industry. Again, this isn't about selling physical products like Amazon -- it's about selling leads to brokers/banks and generating ad revenue on their site.

AMZN is another great biz model. As AMZN goes so will the economy. Their CC this week depicted a very slow economy with much less discretionary spending. Watch both these companies over the next decade. But, you can NEVER compare Zillow to AMZN.