Zillow has completed its acquisition of Dotloop, the digital, e-signing program used by many realtors to do business.
What it acquired is not only the program, but the information stored there. That means your name, your contact information, your real estate contracts, financial documents, anything used in connection with the purchase or sale of a property using the Dotloop program.
Dotloop, after getting slapped around by the California Association of Realtors, stopped claiming it had unlimited rights to all content entered into its program, and instead said it had access, but was limited in what it could do with it.
That could change with a new owner, of course.
Zillow is clearly trying to become a one stop real estate service. They gather listings from MLS, put it on their site, charge agents to be featured on those listings, and now there’s Zillow Offers, which is basically a way to put buyers in contact with sellers while slashing commissions to participating realtors.
They still need realtors, they just don’t want to pay them.
And with Dotloop, they can charge realtors access to a digital signing platform, and make it a perk of paying Zillow to be a Premier Agent, all while collecting more user data on every client.
Zillow, like Walmart, will definitely thin the competition, in time.
The best will survive and maybe even thrive. It’ll just require a little creativity. Being small means being nimble; it means customizing services, and innovating new ones.
The Walmart of real estate is far too big to offer any of that.