IDX Companies Beware (with a Hint from Zillow Group)

I visited Zillow Group’s investor relations page because I wanted to listen in on yesterday’s earnings call (you can see results of Q3 here).

As I was scrolling down the page, I noticed a specific company missing from their “Business Brands” section.

Bridge Interactive, dotloop, and Mortech.

The company missing?

None other than Diverse Solutions.

There has to be a reason the brand is no longer being given any investor love. Multi billion dollar companies don’t decide to ax a logo on their investor relations website “on a whim” to whittle four companies to three. It was removed because it’s not a priority/focus for Zillow Group (someone is free to correct me in the comments if that’s not the case).

If I were an IDX company, Zillow Group’s omission/removal of Diverse Solutions would cause me to think a bit about the future of IDX.

This isn’t a new topic. I published the argument for NOT using IDX back in 2013.

The other big reason for worry: at Zillow’s recent Premier Agent Forum in Las Vegas, major updates to Premier Agent were announced. Starting next year, agents can invite buyers to Zillow’s app and if they accept, that agent becomes the consumers advertised buyer’s agent in the app going forward. Leads generated by Zillow also will only see their buyers agent after they are converted. From an agent perspective — this alleviates the concern of losing potential clients to another agent during their search. Prior to this announcement, agents would “convert” a Zillow lead — then move the conversation into their MLS system, RealScout, IDX, mailchimp, text, or their inbox. Now, Zillow is aiming to enable that follow up conversation to happen directly on their platform.

It seems clear that IDX products just became a heck of a lot less valuable.

Does that spell checkmate for IDX?

PS: If someone wants to write a guest post with the case FOR IDX going in 2018, send me an email.

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