Redfin is disrupting the brokerage model of paying agents price-based commission. As far as I can tell, they are happy to use the existing MLS for listing data, and then put a nice interface on top of it.
> Are you sure that Zillow isn't just scraping the MLS data from broker sites?
Oh, I'm sure they are. But they can't reasonably do this for 100% of regions, and have 100% coverage. My point about the coverage differentiator of Redfin is that in the regions Redfin serves, it has 100% coverage. Zillow claims to serve nationwide, but does not have 100% coverage nationwide.
Not only that, but they're storing the data forever. You can see every time a property is listed, the price changes, status changes to contingent, sale prices, everything.
You don't get that with the MLS system.
>They depend on real estate agents manually inputting their listings into the Zillow/Trulia platforms
Are you sure that Zillow isn't just scraping the MLS data from broker sites?