MIT Forum – Seattle (Zillow, HouseValues, Redfin)

I just arrived back home from the MIT Forum in Seattle. Mike Stephenson and I attended the session and it was quite an interesting panel of speakers. The panel was made up of:

* Nikesh Parekh, VP of Corporate Development of HouseValues
* David Eraker, Founder of Redfin
* Spencer Rascoff, CFO of Zillow
* Gordon Stephenson, Managing Broker with Real Property Associates

For those of you who don’t know:

HouseValues.com is a web site that sells leads to real estate agents. The leads are from their collection of web sites offering home owners a home evaluation. The idea is that the home owner fills in a form on the housevalues.com website and then housevalues.com sells that lead to a Realtor. The Realtor then contacts the home owner and gives them their opinion of what the home is worth.

Redfin.com is a online real estate company that allows home buyers to purchase their homes online at a significant discount.

Zillow.com provides home evaluations to consumers instantly. Their model is advertiser run and is a different take on the same idea behind housevalues.com

Quite an interesting discussion about the direction real estate is going, the effect of the internet and companies like Zillow. Overall everyone spoke very well but I definitely got the feeling that Nikesh of HouseValues.com was on the defence the whole time.