CoStar and Zillow's Google Risk

It seems Google’s masks are off now that the regulatory monkeys are increasingly off its back!

Yesterday, Inman reported:

“Real estate data and analytics firm HouseCanary shook up the industry over the weekend with its Google partnership, which prominently displays ComeHome listings at the top of search results for real estate in several key markets, including Chicago, Denver and Austin. ComeHome is HouseCanary’s home search site and is available in 13 markets.

Buyers can scroll through listing information and schedule a home tour with a top-rated real estate agent selected by Google. The platform transfers the homebuyers’ information to the agent, with an expected response time of 15 minutes or less. The feature is only available on mobile.”

Google understandably likes queries where the user is about to do an expensive thing. Real estate is among the most expensive things most people can do. So, Google would certainly want to keep the user on Google and capture the “contact an agent” step in our real estate buying journey. The screenshot from Mike DelPrete’s blog (which probably broke this news) should feel familiar to anyone who ever searched for a flight or book a hotel, but this time Google is going up the ladder in real estate!

Wait a minute, is Google even allowed to do that?

To answer that question, let’s take a step back and understand how the system currently works. I will elaborate on that and how this may affect CoStar and Zillow behind the paywall.

In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep Dive on a publicly listed company every month. You can find all the 65 Deep Dives here.