Michael Wurzer Russell Shaw (a top producing broker in Phoenix) spends over $800,000 a year on promotion and so he knows the value of what he’s buying. Several years ago, we saw Move (Realtor.com) struggling to sustain revenue growth and Russell tore into them for their “change in business model.” Now we have Zillow running hard to sustain revenue growth, and Russell is taking them to task as well with a new site called ZillowRipsOffAgents.com.
As I wrote a week or so ago, the stock market clearly thinks Zillow and Trulia can keep up their revenue growth for some time, but Russell’s complaints and others like it are at least anecdotal evidence that we’re not seeing a new model but rather a rehashing of an old story that’s already played its way out for Move and may just be playing itself out again for Zillow and Trulia.
Update: Teresa Boardman has a hilarious post all about this same topic.