During the “dot-bomb” era, everyone believed that the Internet was going to “dis-intermediate” all of the middle men in business transactions. Of course, this didn’t happen quite as expected… Now, we’re finally seeing an interesting use of the Internet to help eliminate the least useful intermediary of all — the real estate broker.
There is an interesting start-up called Redfin that uses a combination of MLS and Google Maps to enable an easy match-up of seller and buyer.