Real e-state 2.0

Will this

help or hurt these guys:

John Cook notes:

online real estate companies have raised more than $200 million in venture capital in the past two years
…
Here’s a quick story synopsis: Only the companies with the deepest pockets and largest audience will survive.

Redherring notes that online players are defiant (in denial?) over the impending housing bubble:

It sounds like spin, but web-based brokers ZipRealty and Redfin—as well as property information and service providers like Zillow and Inman—say they’ll not only survive the upcoming U.S. real estate downturn, but actually profit from it. Indeed, when the National Association of Realtors announced that existing home sales fell 11.2 percent in July from July 2005, online players put a happy gloss on the news.

Concludes one analyst:

“The softness in the housing market is going to challenge online sites because they are relying on customer demand to drive advertising revenue,” says Greg Sterling, founder of Sterling Market Intelligence. His company predicts that many of the newest sites will collapse—only the ones that have the highest traffic and good backing, such as Move.com, Zillow, ZipRealty, and AOL Real Estate, will survive the downturn.

I predict mergers that’ll result in a web site named truziloredzip.