This is a great analysis. I'm working on a real estate platform right now [1] and learning the ins and outs of data regulation has been a huge hurdle. As far as I know Trulia and Zillow use lagged and incomplete listings aggregators (e.g. ListHub) and a lot of realtors think their pay-to-play model is hostile to the industry.
To get realtor quality data as a non-brokerage involves convincing each MLS that we're realtor positive and won't cut out agents. There seems to be a lot of fear in this industry that realtors will go the way of travel agents if more tech is introduced. A few of the investor-types we've talked to have tried to push us towards a model that has that potential but, as a lot of people in this thread have noted, we think realtors are providing a lot of value that can't be commoditized so easily.
To get realtor quality data as a non-brokerage involves convincing each MLS that we're realtor positive and won't cut out agents. There seems to be a lot of fear in this industry that realtors will go the way of travel agents if more tech is introduced. A few of the investor-types we've talked to have tried to push us towards a model that has that potential but, as a lot of people in this thread have noted, we think realtors are providing a lot of value that can't be commoditized so easily.
[1]: http://www.openlistings.co/