Zillow Trulia Merger is Apparently Happening - Agents to Become Irrelevant

[Samantha M.]

Zillow and Trulia look like they will likely be merging as shown in this article on CNN:http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/25/real_estate/zillow-trulia/. 

My question to all the agents and brokers here is, do you think eventually they will figure out how to sell and buy real estate online without the need of having an agent? 

Sure seems it is going that way to me and agents/brokers are on their way and becoming irrelevant. 

[Jon Holdman]

There was a time when travel agents thought "Expedia and airline booking sites are no big deal.  People will always need agents".

There was a time when bookstores thought Amazon was no big deal.

There was a time, not even very long ago, when even computer scientists thought it would be impossible for software to drive a car.  The first DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 produced no winners.  Now fully automated cars have logged millions of miles.  Luxury brands prominently feature their automation in their advertising.

Any agent that thinks their job will be unchanged ten years from now is fooling themselves.  For that matter, anyone who's job involves doing the same task over and over - whether its a manual task or a mental task - had better be figuring out what their next job is going to be.  Because a bunch of someones are out there right now working on automating your job.  And one of them is very likely to succeed.