It seems nobody is immune from the power of the internet or the inevitability of progress.
Zillow shook the real estate industry (and lots of homeowners) with last years unveiling of its near-instant online real estate valuations. The complaints came primarily from Realtors who feared the public would come to rely on Zillow Zestimates for home valuations and from homeowners whose property values were decimated by the zestimates. After all, Zillow has no way of knowing about property upgrades or negatives. It bases its valuation on comparative sales in the neighborhood.
Now attorneys may get to wrestle with a similar online competitor called AVVO, whose business model has not yet been revealed.
Their current Googled mission statement is vague enough to keep us all wondering:
Avvo: Helping Consumers Navigate the Legal Industry (providing) law resources and consumer tools to help people make informed decisions about legal services and navigate legal business.
As interesting as the similarities in the two companies might be, the familiarities are almost more interesting. Seattle Post-Intelligencers great blogger John Cook reveals the relationship between the founders of each company in his blog. According to Cook, AVVO CEO Mark Britton and Zillows CEO Rich Barton both worked at Expedia. They left the online travel company at different times, but took similar extended sojourns in Italy after leaving their jobs. Both returned to Seattle with industry-shaking ideas.
Now the two friends are linked by more than their history. It appears Barton is serving on Brittons AVVO Board of Directors and that Barton even helped come up with the AVVO name, which is taken from the Italian avvocato (ie lawyer). And the business model for this legal site is just as shrouded and discussed as Zillowss before its online debut. Could this be a searchable legal site, a rating service for attorneys, or perhaps even a œbid for service model? The secrecy surrounding this venture is great and is likely also part of the marketing buzz and plan.
Forgive the pun, but it appears the bar is being raised in online ventures.
It cracks me up that people actually think Zillow can just throw an accurate home value estimate at them in 2 seconds. I mean, come on, like you said “Zillow has no way of knowing about property upgrades or negatives. It bases its valuation on comparative sales in the neighborhood.”
As much criticisms as sites like GetMyHomesValue.com gets, at least they give their homeowners ACCURATE estimates (b/’c it’s actually a real estate professional doing the estimate). They’ve got that much going them at least!