Impact of Homie on UT real estate market (Utah County)

[Tyler Allan]

Hi BP community,

Newbie here - still have yet to buy my first REI deal - but I am currently in the process of selling our current home (3br 1.5 ba townhouse in Provo) via Homie.com. It seems like a pretty slick way to do FSBO, and the value that they've provided so far has been great (professional photos, good support on listing thru KSL, Zillow, Trulia, etc.). So purely out of curiosity, my question is: what impact, if any, have brokers and real estate agents seen Homie have thus far on the RE market?

Thanks,

Tyler

[William Hochstedler]

Really interesting topic and very much a current hot-button issue.

KSL has partnered with Homie (https://www.ksl.com/?sid=43074764&nid=148&title=ks...)

Zillow is currently in a battle with the utahrealestate.com (the MLS) and other MLS's across the country. (https://www.ultimateidx.com/blog/realtors-push-bac...)

On top of this, buyer behavior is changing.  The first action for an overwhelming percentage of buyers entering the market is to go online.  The problem is, with all this noise (literally thousands of aggregation and syndication sites), they are quickly becoming overwhelmed and subsequently hiring an agent to help them navigate the options.  As a result, the percentage of buyers using a real estate agent is now higher than it's ever been.  According to NAR, a whopping 88% of home buyers are using an agent.

And guess what...real estate agents are presenting properties from the MLS that has functionality to help them sell property as well as built-in compensation agreements. They simply aren't looking at these FSBO sites.

So there's a feedback loop happening here where aggregators/syndicators entering the market are diluting it.  This pushes buyers to hire agents.  This makes it harder for FSBO's to sell because the vast majority of their buying market is now being represented by agents who are not looking at these sites.

So the irony is that, not only are new players entering the market fighting over the 12% of unrepresented buyers, their mere existence is reducing the size of that market.  How sexy does your website have to be to change that dynamic?