Zillow gets licenses to sell real estate

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Zillow.com has received real estate brokerage licenses for Washington and a handful of other states, but the Seattle company says it has no intention of competing against real estate agents by selling homes directly to consumers through its Web site.

Zillow, which last week launched an online home valuation service that affixes an estimated value to some 40 million U.S. residences, applied to become a broker so it could receive up-to-the-minute data feeds from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, vice president Jorrit Van der Meulen said.

Those feeds, which include sales data, could be used to more quickly and accurately predict the value of homes, Van der Meulen said. Currently, the company obtains the bulk of its data from county property records -- a laborious task that can take days or weeks to compile.

Since the Zillow service launched last week, numerous homeowners have complained that the estimates -- which the company dubs Zestimates -- are way off the mark. Van der Meulen said the MLS data could help improve the accuracy of the real-time home values.

I'll bet those real estate commissions are coming down.