Zippy house-hunter: Joseph Lashinsky
(CNN) — Joseph P. Lashinsky wants to move you to a new home at the click of a button. He’s the CEO of ZipRealty, an online house-hunting service with annual sales of more than 100 million dollars. The company maintains an online database of homes for sale in more than 30 metropolitan areas for both buyers and sellers. And while you’ll hear plenty about how tough the U.S. housing market is right now, Lashinsky is optimistic.
Maggie Lake: Were you concerned the housing downturn would actually make it difficult for the company to survive?
Lashinsky: We believe that our model has great service, agents who are local in the market. We give rebates back to consumers, we give complete transparency, we think those things will enable us to differentiate ourselves — and we have a much lower cost structure than a traditional real estate broker, so we think we have some advantages with this model over our competitors.
Lake: How difficult is this? You are trying to disrupt a business model that has been around for a long time. People traditionally use real estate brokers to buy a house, now you are trying to get them to shop online. How hard is it to change people’s behavior?
Lashinsky: This is a very difficult market to change. First of all, there are over a million, 200,000 realtors out there who are doing business one way. And we’re a small, growing company that has 2,300 agents that are trying to do business a little different. We focus on the consumer instead of on the agents. And it’s a business that hasn’t really changed since Eisenhower was President. The commissions haven’t changed, the way the business is done hasn’t changed. So it’s very difficult, it’s very slow-moving, there’s lots of entrenchment that’s going on. And we have to work with them on everything we do, ’cause they’re on the other side.
(Lashinsky had never worked in real estate before — his background was in consumer products at the likes of General Mills. But personal experience led him to the online home business.)
Lashinsky: I just could not believe that here’s an industry where, you know, I’ve talked to consumers who say, I’ve had a better time buying a tire, or buying a purse, than I did buying my house. I found it so stressful, I couldn’t believe it. And I just thought there was a better way to do it.
