Editorial by Bryan Menell

I’m not exactly an economist, but I’ve recently noticed some innovations that I think are really brilliant. The definition of a market price is whatever a willing buyer will pay a willing seller. But what about prices that are kind of on the fringe of the market. Perhaps a somewhat willing seller, or I could call it a conditional seller? There have been web concepts with conditional buyers before, for example when buyers are willing to buy when a good reaches a specific price. But I think this conditional seller thing is rather new.

There are two web sites out there today that illustrate this point.

• Zillow.com is one of many new breed online real estate web sites. It will help you estimate the market value of your property, the accuracy of which is a topic of debate. From that standpoint it’s not terribly remarkable. Zillow.com’s conditional selling mechanism is called Make Me Move. They call it "that magical number you just can’t refuse." You set your number on the website (without technically listing your house for sale), and buyers come to you if they’re serious.
• iTaggit.com is an Austin-based company that allows you to organize and manage your collections. I have to admit, I have a pretty good collection of Star Trek Xmas ornaments. When you list your items, you can enter what iTaggit calls the Parting Price. So it’s not really for sale, but for a certain price I would be willing to part with my item(s).

It is a kind of new market in a way, one that was previously invisible. It would be interesting to hear from somebody who is schooled in economics discuss what this means from an economics perspective. Either way, these two companies have created a whole new market that didn’t exist before.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed under: Opinion/Editorial