Tag Archives: Zillow

Climbing into bed with the competition

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I caught an investigative bug tonight, and I feel a strong need to post this speculation…

  • Fact 1 — Rob over at Your Seattle’ Neighborhood Specialist had some great commentary on Zillow in the months leading up to their beta release
  • Fact 2 — Rob has been silent since the release of Zillow
  • Fact 3 — Marlow Harris also noticed this, so I’m not the only one wondering what happened to Rob
  • Fact 4 — A reader pointed out to me that hourlyagents.com service is no longer available.
  • Fact 5 — Rob used to heavily promote the Hourly Agents site and his blog still has a link to it
  • Fact 6 — The hourly agents site now says “This Domain is For Sale — Please contact info@hourlyagents.com for details. — In the meantime, please join me at Redfin”

So when Marlow asks:

Where are you? Where are all your editorials and opinions? You were writing up a storm before, but now that Zillow has revealed itself, you’re silent.

Did you get that job there, after all? Did you sign some sort of oath of silence?

WHAT DO YOU THINK???”

I think the answer is worse than an oath of silence… I don’t think he’s working for Zillow (those people have definitely woken up to the idea of communicating!), but rather, I think he must have climbed into bed with the competition!

UPDATE 1: I just found out that Redfin started blogging one day before Zillow, but… it slipped past me as they haven’t shared any link love (yet!).

Update 2: Redfin added Rain City Guide to their sidepanel! Thanks you guys! Now all I need is for the HouseValues blog to add a link to Rain City Guide and I’ll have completed a Seattle Real Estate Technology Trifecta! 😉

Update 3: The Trifecta is complete!

You don't know the power of the dark side

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vaderAfter playing with Zillow for the past couple of days, the first words that come to mind are “Impressive, but you are not a Jedi yet”. I have a hunch the guys at HouseValues are going to get “Netscaped” if they don’t take their game to next level.

The Good
The UI is slick. The mapping isn’t quite Virtual Earth / Google maps slick but it’s close (if you add mouse wheel zoom, arrow key navigation support and resizeable maps, I’d put it in that league). Seeing all the lot boundaries displayed on the map is something that I haven’t seen done well before and is a feature that will be expensive or difficult for Zillow’s competitors to match. I like the fact that they partnered with GlobeXplorer, since I believe that will enable them to out map RedFin.

The Ugly
I find all the trash talk about uptime and availability amusing. As any experienced software engineer will tell you, the first days for any web based service that has had the anticipation & hype of Zillow are going be rough. After all, if the mighty Microsoft had troubles with X-Box Live when Halo 2 was launched a few years ago, the fact that Zillow’s first day had some minor troubles is hardly surprising. Besides, I’m sure Rich Barton and the boys will buy a few AMD Dual Core Athlons CPUs with the new WD Raptor drives during the next few days and cure that problem.

The Bad
I suspect biggest problem with Zestimates is the current lack of high quality data. (Gee, the same issue I keep complaining about). Any realtor will point out, doing an accurate completive market analysis house is a problem that involves many, many variables. I understand it’s a hard problem, but the fact that the Zetimates are so far off for my house (which I thought should be an easy case) is disappointing. I don’t expect accurate estimates for waterfront, hilltop views, high rise condos, Bill Gate’s house or rural properties. But my house is a cookie cutter house is suburbia (with lots of similar houses for sale). I would think my house would be an easy one to get right.

Just for kicks, I implemented a quick & dirty Compeitive Market Analysis feature for the Rain City Guide home search. I found it to be more accurate than Zillow for my house, and Dustin thought my estimate was right on the money for his home (after he entered the correct square footage). Anyway, play around with it and let us know how close to the “right” price it is for your area.

BTW – My version just goes against active NWMLS listings (so forget about trying it if don’t live in Washington). It’s pretty crude and it’s not as cool as Zillow, but then again, I hardly have $32 in venture capital (much less $32 million), so cut me some slack!

I think the nay sayer would be wise to recall the words my former boss once said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” Zillow’s Zestimates may be off in Safeco Field right now, but I have no doubt they will get much better over time. And when they do get better (not if), you better be ready.

Well, I’m going to shut up now and let my code do the talking. I’m sure the engineers at Zillow are following suit.

Robbie
Caffeinated Software

Zillow's Impact On Day 1

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Despite the fact that the Zillow site spent most of the day gasping and sighing, a ton of digital ink was spilled discussing their service (or lack thereof). Here are the articles I found most interesting from Day 1:

By the way, if you scrol through this Technorati search, you’ll notice that not only was I the first blogger to break the story, but I announced Zillowblog an hour before it went live!)

How well does Zillow Zestimate your home?

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Since everyone’s doing it, I thought it would be fun to have one place where people discuss how good Zillow’s “Zestimator” is working!

The process is simple…

1) Go to Zillow.com
2) Type in your address
3) Record the Zestimate of your home
4) Return here, and let us know in the comments how well their tool stacks up to reality.


Here are the Zestimates I’ve gathered so far:

  • My home: The zestimate is probably $40 to 60K too high. The home next door to mine, (which is almost identical) sold this summer for $80K less than the Zestimate
  • Ardell’s home: $200K less than she just paid for it!
  • Robbie’s current home: He estimates that it is $220K too low!
  • Rich Barton’s home: He may have “overpaid a bit” on his $2.6M Madison Park home.

How well does Zillow Zestimate your home?

Zats really cool…

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Zillow has launched!

I just got an email from Zillow’s Director of Communications and she passed along the fact that not only is their blog live, but a beta version of their site is live as well… Rich and David flipped the switch!

So, what does Zillow do?

In two minutes of of a Skype conversation with my mom, we were able to find the “Zestimated” value of my home in Seattle, my mom’s home in Sacramento, and my grandmother’s home in Las Vegas… Very cool indeed, especially since my home value is zestimated to be worth $140K more than we paid for it two-and-half years ago!

From what I can tell, they’ve found a way to estimate the value of thousands upon thousands of homes (60,000,000+ homes by their count). For my neighborhood, they have lots of background information on each home… Not only does it tell you the size, square feet, lot size, etc. but it also gives information like a list of recently sold comparable homes. Very cool indeed.

zillow_screenshot_1

The site is loaded with tables, graphs, and charts for each home.

Probably the strongest selling point so far is that creating a set of comparables is so easy. I’ve worked a fair amount with Anna to develop comparable market analysis, and I can tell you that agents may have access to slightly better data on each home, but Zillow’s system is SO much easier to use that I imagine many agents will turn to Zillow from now on…

zillow_charts

Interesting, interesting stuff… It is interesting that the site has a complete lack of obtrusive ads and it will be really interesting to see how this plays out in the agent community. I’m not seeing a lot of negatives so far.

Here’s how Rich Barton explains their business model on the Zillow blog:

I’d like to make a comment on our business model, which I’ve found helps divine motives. Zillow.com will make revenues from advertisements on the site. We will always be crystal clear about what is content and what is advertising, just like any respectable content provider, and our advertising will not define our content. However, the beauty of “Web 2.0

Does Zillow's Game Plan Includes Blogging?

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dark doorYou bet it does!

I just noticed that I’ve started to get hits from website with the URL: www.zillowblog.com… (Don’t expect much from the link as the site is password protected at the moment.) IT’S LIVE!

A little research into the URL suggests that the site is owned by Zillow as one would expect.

I don’t think the idea of a zillow blog will shock anyone, but it may help one of those people who are attempting to put together the Zillow puzzle.

And while I’m up to Zillow updates, the latest press release from Property Shark mentions Zillow 4 times!

New York City, February 7, 2006 – PropertyShark.com announces its home sale-price maps to empower appraisers and real estate professionals to effectively serve home buyers and sellers.

Launched as a beta, an example of this map for New York City can be seen here: http://www.propertyshark.com/maps/sales/

“We’ve decided to launch this on the eve of the launch of residential home valuation tool Zillow because, in my opinion, computer-based automated valuations, such as those you will likely see at Zillow, are more likely to be wrong than right. Every property is an illiquid, unique asset, and a computer program cannot accurately predict the price it will fetch on the market,” commented PropertyShark.com founder, Matthew Haines.

PropertyShark.com, which is designed primarily for use by appraisers and real estate professionals, provides users with the original data directly from government records, including sales price, mortgage amounts, document images, and ownership records.

“My understanding is that Zillow is out to disintermediate the broker and real estate salesperson, attempting to devalue the broker’s Comparable Market Analysis by providing an instant valuation of sorts. Unlike Zillow, PropertyShark.com is focused on empowering real estate professionals, not disempowering them. We give professionals, and savvy consumers, the actual raw data, as well as an unprecedented level of depth which captures the unique nature of each piece of real estate and its value,” expanded PropertyShark.com chief executive officer, Ryan Slack.

I wonder if the people at Zillow feel extra pressure because of all the expectations?

UPDATE:
Here are the Seattle property maps from PropertyShark. Select “Residential Sales/Sq ft (2004)” from their pull down menu to see an interesting map of all the property sales in the region color coded by the price per square foot of the sale. Interesting stuff…

Zillow fans, meet your new blog

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Blog of Spencer Rascoff, employee of Zillow. Today’s post gives out (already available) information about Zillow. They’ve raised $32 million. It sounds like they’re settling in on a business model: Zillow’s 75 employees (mostly engineers) will manage to get the beta version out within the next 6 months. The comparison of Zillow to Hotwire is also very informative.

-Galen
ShackPrices.com

List of the Most innovative Search Sites

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Innovative Real Estate TechnologiesThere are so many interesting real estate search sites that are pop up every day, and in the process of trying to cover all of them in a blog format, I think things have gotten a little too scattered. So I took a little time this evening and put all of the sites that I’m aware of on one page along with a few notes about them. Check it out at:

At this point, I’ve broken all of the sites into four categories:

  • National Sites: major MLS and FSBO sites
  • Regional Sites: smaller data sets that are yet to go national
  • Specialty Sites: sold data, property information, etc.
  • Vaporware: still waiting for a product…

This beauty of making this list on a webpage instead of a blog post is that it will be much more fluid. I always feel awkward about updating a blog entry after I’ve posted it, but I’ll feel no qualms about updating this list on a regular basis. Along those lines, if you know of an innovative real estate tool that I’ve missed, please let me know!

Where the Streets Have No Name…

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Grand View
Part I: Background
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on the players in the future of real estate search, today’s news unleashes a whole new set of opportunities! “Homestore, Inc., the leading provider of real estate media and technology solutions, today announced that Elevation Partners, a private equity firm, has agreed to invest $100 million in Homestore…”

Since I’ve been covering real estate search, I’ve had numerous emails, chats, conversations, etc. from real estate agents who think that I should highlight more of the companies that are working to improve the MLS instead of the companies that are looking to replace it!

More than anyone else, Homestore represents the hope that someone will provide an awesome, nationwide, competitive real estate search based on the current MLS system.

Why? Homestore already operates the largest real estate database, i.e.the database that operates Realtor.com.

Now mix together (1) the only complete nationwide MLS database (that I’m aware of), (2) $100M to improve operations, and (3) some VERY accomplished tech visionaries, and I’d imagine that expectations are set very high.

For Homestore, Elevation Partners brings a former Apple star, a former Electronic Arts star, a Silicon Valley star, and of course, a rock star… There are enough opportunities to make one’s head buzz… I’m thinking:

  • Real estate listings on my iPod
  • Simcity interface for home search
  • Home listing videos done MTV-style

Okay, so maybe my head started spinning a little too much! Back on planet earth, I’d say that all the players (Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Google, etc.) building innovative home search tools should keep a close eye on Homestore. They already “own” a complete and nationwide set of real estate data (ownership in the sense that they have “possession”!). Should they start putting together some innovative tools, they have leverage that others are going to find hard to beat!

Part II: Where the Streets have No Name
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

Part III: Your Mission Should you Wish to Accept It
Imagine that you’ve been invited to 2800 Sand Hill Road to discuss the future of real estate with Roger McNamee, Fred Anderson, Bono, John Riccitiello, John Doerr, and Joe Hanauer.

What do you tell them? What features do you want to see in real estate search? If you are an agent, what is the biggest pain that someone could fix with a technical solution? If you are a buyer, what are the major gaps you see in the current system? What information do you wish you had?

I know that some of my readers have some great ideas. Please share as much as you’re willing. Remember that these guys want to work “within” the current system (i.e. cooperate with real estate agents!), and, most importantly, these people are thinking huge… $100M huge!

The State of Real Estate Search

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real estate search enginesTom over at the Seattle Property News summed the current state of real estate search with this question: “Is there a regional bubble in online real estate sites?”

From a consumer’s point-of-view, it is wonderful that home buyers (and sellers!) are starting to see so many options come on the market. I’ve really enjoyed following as more and more of these tools come on-line and I thought I would take today to review some of the posts I’ve had on real estate search. If you are looking to freshen up on the future of real estate search, there is lots of information (and links to more info) in the following articles:

As a fun little aside, when a new search site is announced I like to see the type of buzz that it is getting in the blogosphere. The chart from this post shows the relative buzz that Trulia, Redfin and Zillow have been getting.

Also, there are a few small search sites, like Propsmart, that I haven’t covered mainly because I simply don’t have anything interesting to say about them yet. However, if you are building (or have built) a real estate search site, I’m definitely interested in hearing about it!