Friday, February 10th, 2006
Zillow.com - web 2.0 real estate
Zillow has been getting a lot of press recently for its live mapping combined with real estate info. I even heard a blurb on NPR the other day about it. Just type in the address you are interested in and it will show you the assessed value and valuations of other homes in the area. For some houses it also has square footage, bedroom/bathroom count, and historical info. Read this for a perspective from within the real estate industry.
What impressed me from the technical standpoint is the smoothness of the mapping. It feels more responsive then Google Maps (although the window size is smaller and fixed) and there are some nice transition effects when the zoom level changes. I noticed there were some refresh issues when zoomed in to a dense neighborhood, but beyond that the mapping is pretty impressive.
Redfin has been doing much the same thing for the housing market in Washington for a while now. It’s more of a house-finding service than a general Real Estate market tool. It’s way cool.
Oops!
They must be overwhelmed!
Here is the text from their home page:
Our apologies
Due to overwhelming demand, our beta site is down. We’ll be back online as soon as possible. Please check with us again later.
Yea they have been getting crushed by the demand. Its worth bookmarking and checking out in a few days when things settle down.
Interestingly enough, their UI is done using Flash, with some AJAX/DHTML along the side.
A major component of the UI is done using flash … the rest of the site is Tapestry 4.
A new real estate search engine extate.com is much sexier. No stupid maps all over the place, great ajax auto-complete for locations, lots of tag features, clean user-friendly interface, Google-style. Too bad its for UK only for now.
I agree that zzillow.com is one of the best tools available for anyone who wants to buy or sell their house. Some of the maps are not updated on newly built houses, but I am sure they are not far behind in getting the data entered in no time.
It only misjudged the value of my house by $600k…
Zillow is like being brand new to computing and getting a new PC.
You excitedly open the new box, you set it all up and it runs at 200 MHZ on a 16 dial up modem. You don’t know any better being new to all this, and you think you are rocking and rolling.
The problem I have with Zillow is that you come in realistically believing that you will get a validl estimate of the value of your house. So we as consumer reasonably would think that it is somewhat accurate.
But the numbers they create cannot be accurate because County Public Sales records have always been famously WRONG!
The only entity who carries correct sales data is the Realtor organizations because they force their members to record the sales data so that they can do accurate estimates.
Who do you think Appraisers go to when they need to get the right info?
As I point out at
my post about the company
The most impressive part about Zillow is their massive marketing and publicity campaign.
Leave the comps up to companies like Fidelity National to provide the most accurate and current comps directly from the county. You always need to ask companies such as Zillow, how often they are updating their database with sales data from national compilers such as SiteXdata.com.
I dont get all the hype! just another site, some sites have the best PR agents, i wonder what they did to get the word out like they did. o well, my rating is a 1 out 10, nothing special, nothing accurate, they got the 1 b/c they look good. but i do see the giants adding this as a tool, and just making it no point to use this site.
you gotta check out http://www.HomePriceMaps.com
out of many tries in a week. the site only works once.
i don’t know what you critics are talking about. i check the sales price of my home and those of other that i knew for sure and zillow had them all correct
The consumer should be vary wary of a mechanism that misses the mark on features and amenities that add value to ones home. The samples I ran on multiple homes I have recently listed or sold were in some cases 35% below market value. And, I would challange the data sources that Zeroill uses. This could cost the consumer thoulsands if this “tool” is relied upon. This system, coupled with the fact that FISBO’s in Florida (where I reside and practice) sold for an average of $40,000 less than homes that used a Realtor. Consumers, be careful of what you wish for, you might NOT get it!
Zillow is a great service…and for Illinois Foreclosures I recommend the Illinois Foreclosure Listing Service. They have a great mix of technology and usable information and list of Chicago Real Estate. I think they will add a link to Zillow for the valuations.
what do people think about http://www.HomePriceMaps.com
its fairly simply, no registration, just lets people do searches based on city or zipcode
i am not sure i would call http://www.HomePricemaps.com DATA PORN, i mean aren’t we helping the consumer make better informed decisions, thus not relying upon the realtor as much, or at least giving the consumer the ability to know when his realtor is screwing him over?
since when is THAT PORN????????????????????
I really like ZZILLOW.com with all the tools available to both real estate brokers and homeowners. You can check back every week and see how much your house has gone up! It gives pretty accurate information.
Zillow is neat, but it does not have any homes within ½ mile of me. My neighbor with whom I share a driveway just sold his home. His house is not on zillow either. What is the point of homepricemaps.com? It is simply google.maps - no home prices anywhere!
I am sure that Zillow gives a fairly accurate value of a home located in the city, but they are not very accurate on the value of the land . Bare land with no improvements in the area where we live is selling for much more than they value the land that we own that has improvements. I am sure this is because of the fact that it is a manufactured home, but our whole 5 acres is fenced, has a well and other improvements.
Zillow is just another great tool in the tool box. The thing is that most sellers think their home is worth more than it comps for, and the buyer thinks that the home is worth less. Check out Zillow’s margin of error. They’re not perfect. Neither is a comp off the MLS. Neither is an appraisal. But used together, a buyer or seller can point the compass in a better direction. Remember, everything is negotiatable. Your home is only what a buyer is willing to pay.
Not only did they get the value of my home wrong but they also said it is 1100 sft and two bedrooms,it is actually 2400 sft and 4 bedrooms.If any one relies on this site for valuation when selling a house they could lose some serious money.I have informed them via e-mail of there mistake 3 times now but they still have not put it right and havnt had the manners to reply to my e-mails.
Zillow is an excellent tool. No , I would not take the valuations at face value. But, with a little analysis and common sense the data is an excellent source for making valuations. I checked 10 to 15 homes for sale in my area and found they were priced right at the “recent sales” on a square foot basis.
[...] Zillow and Real Estate ABC might have something to be worried about, as well as a more traditional competitors in this space. [...]
ran into this cool site…
http://HomePriceMaps.com/Portland.htm integrates how much homes SOLD for in Portland as well as nationwide using the google mapping technology
[...] Zillow and Real Estate ABC might have something to be worried about, as well as some more traditional competitors in this space. [...]
Buyers and Sellers are getting more independent by using Zillow like tools..
Tracy
Miami Real Estate Florida
Great comment, I agree completely.
I was very upset at your site. My listing had several huge errors in it.
If I were looking for property I would not go to your site as it does not put accurate info. If it is wrong in mine how right do you think the rest are. There are 7 errors in mine. Wow quite a few errors. Lets see how soon you can correct it. Plus the fact that in my error prices seem to change at least every 3 months. Accurate appraisals I don’t think so when using info from over a year ago.
The problem with sitex is that it is tied to hsbc and if you are a mortgage broker or lender you are getting back solicited.
I think buyers have access to a lot of nice financials tools for their equity mortgages now.
home mortgage should be easy to get but banks make it harder it seems.
You have some CSS glitch or something that prevents any page after page 1 from loading into the printer, so I cannot print out the comments to this post.
http://twitter.com/vaspers
“but banks made it harder..”?
Ever heard of sub prime?
The system looks lovely but if you can’t bookmark your favorite search then you’re lost - because every time you return you have to start over. Or maybe I missed that when I was mucking about… but they can’t afford to have people “miss that”. An RSS feed of listings would be nice too - but that kills their control of the onsite user experience.
I think the title of this article is the most dramatic thing because it recognizes Zillow as a web 2.0 company. We just blogged about web 2.0’s effect on real estate here:
http://www.applyblog.com/2007/07/11/web-20-will-revamp-the-real-estate-industry/
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