Building Expert at 415 East 85th Street

I owned Apt 12F for almost 10 years, and have sold more apts in the building than any other broker the past five years. So, while I am truly the building expert for 415 E 85 St, the same cannot be said about building experts at other buildings. The old StreetEasy that we all knew and love is now owned by Zillow. If you doubt this, just scroll to the bottom of any page on StreetEasy and you will... [more]

I owned Apt 12F for almost 10 years, and have sold more apts in the building than any other broker the past five years. So, while I am truly the building expert for 415 E 85 St, the same cannot be said about building experts at other buildings. The old StreetEasy that we all knew and love is now owned by Zillow. If you doubt this, just scroll to the bottom of any page on StreetEasy and you will see the Zillow Sites, Inc copyright. In the old days when StreetEasy listed the top five sales agents and top five rental agents in a building, it was truly based on closed transactions by those individual agents. Unfortunately, that all changed when Zillow bought StreetEasy. They immediately saw an opportunity to charge agents, like myself, for the building expert slot. So, StreetEasy created the Building Expert title as a revenue stream for them, to sell as advertising to the agents in this market. Since StreetEasy refuses to be transparent about this fact, I am simply stating the facts here, facts that may not be obvious to the consumer. On 25 June 2015, at an event called The Future of Real Estate, one agent asked Susan Daimler, the general manager of StreetEasy and Zillow NYC, “Does two sales in two years [make someone an] expert?”, and I followed that up by asking Ms. Daimer to (have StreetEasy) begin to display the words "paid advertisement" under each building expert as a way to be truly transparent to the consumer. She did not reply. Shouldn't the consumer know this fact? I think so. Here’s a link to a Real Deal article about that event: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/06/25/streeteasy-exec-takes-heat-for-building-expert-program/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=streeteasy-exec-takes-heat-for-building-expert-program. I am confident that you will find that I am truly the building expert for 415 E 85 St, having served on the board when I lived there. I look forward to helping you to sell or buy at this wonderful building. [less]