Zillow once again is showing why it is two steps ahead of those in the housing industry. First, they manage to aggregate an incredible amount of data including tax records and previous sales prices all in one simple to use website. That is the primary function that set things off. Zillow integrates [...]
Interesting and open, this is how I would characterize Jorrit Van Der Meulen, the Vice President of Partner Relations for Zillow. I had the opportunity to hear Mr. Van Der Meulen talk at my monthly Forum XXII networking meeting. He shared some of the history of the Zillow, the missteps, changes in direction, and future [...]
В Твиттере всю последнюю неделю бродит ссылка на сайт GlassDoor.com, с отзывами сотрудников IT-компаний о работодателях. Можно, например, посмотреть размер жалования и удовлетворенность уровнем зарплат инженеров Google, сравни
According to the social networking blog Mashable.com, Zillow has been banned from operating in Arizona. The cease and desist order claims that Zillow shouldn't be offering up estimates of property values -- called 'zestimates' -- unless it has registered with the state as a certified appraiser:The state of Arizona has issued a cease and desist to Zillow, citing that Zillow needs to be a certified
You've seen her and probably debated or interacted with her..Zillow..Zestimates always makes for an interesting conversation but Sarah Bonert seems to do it with class, style and fun. I am lucky I met her..so this makes for an interesting conversation..especially since we aint talking Activerain points but strictly Sarah and Zillow! This is a great opportunity to get to know her and what Zillow is all about..CENTURY 21 recently partnered and I cannot deny I had some concerns but if you familiarize yourself with the site you might feel differently..Am I convinced? My recommendation..read what she has to say and you decide! Share with us your Zillow experience.Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up at zillow? I started my prof
Marin County is one of the most expensive specialty real estate markets in the United States. A wealthy suburb of San Francisco, Marin real estate has continued to thrive in today’s tough economy.
Unlike the rest of the Bay Area where Realtor marketing meetings are a weekly opportunity for Realtors to present listings, mingle with affiliates, [...]
Zillow doesn’t see itself as a real estate “vertical.” Instead it regards itself as a media company that creates advertising opportunities around what is arguably the most significant “life events” purchase: buying a home.
In that spirit the company is developing numerous interesting marketing vehicles aimed at consumers in all phases of home buying (and in [...]
Real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced the launch of Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, an open and transparent lending marketplace, offering borrowers an anonymous and hassle-free way to request custom loan quotes directly from registered lenders. In turn, lenders can respond to an unlimited number of loan quote requests directly from borrowers — for free. Zillow [...]
Zillow has a new service called a "Zindex" that gives average prices for an area broken down by home type. The problem is Zillow doesn't really know what a home type is. And if they can't even tell the difference between a home type and home ownership structure, why should we trust anything they publish. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at their company has ever sold a house or held a real estate license. Just to clarify my point, Zillow...
Zillow just released their Quarterly Home Value Report for the Washington, DC metro area, including Loudoun County. It's interesting to compare this to other reports regarding the Washington, DC metroa area as a whole, as well as 2008 assessments from...
Zillow revised their 4th Quarter report late Thursday the 28th of February that according to Zillow “MORE EXPLICITLY DESCRIBES THE RATES OF NEGATIVE EQUITY FOR ALL HOMEOWNERS IN THE U.S. IN EACH OF THE YEARS 2003, 2006 AND 2007.” The original report had been released on February 12th as reported on PRNewswire.
In that report the [...]
Zillow.com has become a media darling. In case you don’t know, Zillow.com is where you can get the company’s take on how much your house and millions of others across the country are worth, and has become one of top time wasters of homeowners. Here’s how it works: you go to zillow.com, type in an [...]
New distribution channels have been added for your RES Flyers.
Today we launched distribution links to Zillow.com, Geebo.com and Hotpads.com, to add to the already available syndication channels at RealEstateShows.com. You may update any existing listing to these new channels by logging into your account, clicking on Manage & Edit Existing Shows and then clicking on [...]
With all the recent talk about subprime mortgages, foreclosures and government bail outs, the days of comparing Zillow with Trulia with Realtor.com seem to be gone. That's why we'd like to revisit those discussions from the angle of "what's been going on with these three since we lasted talked about them?". Well, here are some graphs from Compete.com comparing the three sites in terms of people count, visits and rank.
People Count -the number of people visiting the site:
Since November 2006, Realtor.com has increased their people count by 10.8 percent; Zillow by 17.4 percent; Trulia by 191.3 percent. Though Realtor.com is still the king of the people count with 5.7M people coming through last month, it has lost significant ground in the latter part of 2007. This is not good news for the giant because, while they were losing ground, Zillow was relatively flat overall and Trulia continued to grow.
Pages Per Visit - the number of pages an average person views on a visit to each s
Zillow on Tuesday released their quarterly report, referred to as a Zindex.
OK, so what’s a Zindex?
The Zindex home valuation index is the median Zestimate valuation for a given geographic area on a given day.
According to their report: Nearly 16% of Homeowners Who Bought in the Past Year Have Negative Equity as Home Values Decline for the Fourth Consecutive Quarter
Markets with the greatest proportion of homes with negative equity were those hit hardest by declining values. They make mention of those that purchased homes during the past year at the height of the market in California’s Central Valley, parts of Florida and Las Vegas. In these areas they report that double-digit depreciation and negative equity rates reach up to five times the national median.
So, basically they are not reporting any thing that most of us did not already know. If you bought at the top of the market and you did not put a lot of money down, more than likely your-house is worth less than wha
The press is a buzz with the news that Zillow has signed a deal with 11 major publishers that equates to 282 Newspapers.
With the new arrangement, real estate ads placed with these news papers will automatically get placement on Zillows web site.
I say so what ?
While this may be good for Zillow in raking in some cash from the Newspaper Publishing industry, Realtors can already do this from many different sources.
Savvy Realtors that have embraced Technological changes and are up to speed on Web 2.0, are doing this now. Any Realtor worth his or her salt knows that 80% of the buying market goes to the Internet first. Spending money on a dying medium like news papers is literally throwing money out the window. In the current Economic client and down turn in the market, I would put my money and expertise where it gets the best results. I am sorry but the statistics don’t-support the News Papers as a viable source for Residential Real Estate sales as they once did.
Which is intere
Zillow.com is partnering with over 280 newspapers to provide local classified information such as for-sale listings and open house information. An obvious move to become a real estate classified vortal. "Together with Zillow, we bring a unique and compelling set...
Several months ago I wrote a post about REALTOR com and the third party real estate listing sites. At the time, I suggested, well, more than suggested that the NAR itself was to blame for allowing the third party websites to become as large as they are and that ultimately consumers would be the ultimate losers if the trend continued. I need to amend that, or, add to it I suppose.
Recently I stumbled across an article written by Eric Blackwell about how to avoid being ripped off by REALTOR.com. Eric’s article made it clear to me that I did not originally go far enough - I even tried to suggest that REALTOR.com could be a viable alternative if they got their act together. Well they haven’t. Instead they continue to use heavy handed tactics to persuade real estate agents that they are the end all be all as it relates to the best way to market real estate online. What a joke, and don’t get me started about their fees. Do you know what you could do to market your listing
There seems to be a lot of controversy in the Real Estate community surrounding Zillow. Inman news recently put out a good article about the topic at http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=64724&CatType=RWe are asking the AR community on their thoughts on Zillow because we are thinking about syndicating Real Estate listings created on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com to Zillow. As Realtors do you see any benefit for having your listings on Zillow or do you see it more as a bad thing? They are now generating about two-thirds as much traffic as Realtor.com so it seems like it would be an ideal place to post your listings to but we want to hear from you.Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Happy Friday!I am writing today to let you know that Zillow is now selling advertising space on their website. Zillow.com is one of the most-visited real estate sites on the Web, used by millions of prospective home buyers, sellers, and owners every month!This is where the buyers are looking…get noticed!Here is the link to a page with more information and pricing: http://www.zillow.com/ezads/GetStarted.htm?s_cid=emm-2007018agentoutreachPostEZ-getstartedezLet me know if you’d like us to coordinate this for you. Click Here to email me!Have a wonderful weekend!
At Real Estate Connect I had a chance to sit down for a one-on-one interview with Rich Barton of Zillow. Love them or hate them, Zillow is now generating about two-thirds as much traffic as Realtor.com. Can your business afford to ignore such a powerful place to advertise for just pennies?
A Dec. 14 blog post entitled “Real Estate Horror” on the Sellsius blog shows a picture of Peter Lorre speaking to Frankenstein.
(Read the full post about ‘An agent’s closer look at Zillow’…)
RE/MAX.com, one of the most traveled real estate websites in the country, is rolling out a few new features that is sure to keep their consumer market share on the upswing. These two new features are known as Neighborhood Evaluation and Enhanced Mapping. RE/MAX International Chairman and Co-founder Dave Liniger outlined Neighborhood Valuation in August during the Summer conference for Broker/Owners in Denver Colorado. The system currently being beta tested in a few select markets, provides a price range for similar homes rather than a the estimated value for a specific property. This system encourages the consumer to contact a RE/MAX associate for a better handle on the exact value.Liniger said at the conference " I don't think the Zillows of the world are doing consumers any good" He noted that the prices estimates given by Zillow.com are often way off the mark of the homes true market value. "Our Neighborhood Valuation feature maintains the agent as the e
As you know Zillow bases their “Zestimates” on public records. With that said, I’m sure you are also aware that not all “Zestimates” are correct. While adding your listings “For Sale” on the Zillow site helps to move the published Zestimate to a less prominent spot on the page, it does not eliminate the Zestimate all together. With that said, you or your seller are able to create a new Zestimate based on additional facts such as updates that may not be in public records, you can also associate different comps that directly relate to the home’s value. Since this is very specific it needs to be done by either you or the seller, we are listing out the instructions below on how to create your own Zestimate that the Zillow Public will also be able to see in addition the Zestimate that Zillow publishes. Please note, you can choose to do nothing, this is just our way of staying on top of issues that may arise from this system. Many people do realize that Zillow is not c
Hello....just in from Sarah at Zillow. Thought you all would be interested in seeing the stats for the entire Tampa Bay Area.Sarah here from Zillow.com. We have just released home value data for Q2 2007 for the Tampa area and I thought you might be interested. The report shows how each county, city and neighborhood/ZIP code has performed over the past quarter, year, 5 years and 10 years. Something new we added this quarter is the ability to look at how large homes have fared against small homes, how condos are doing compared to single-family homes, etc. For example, nationally midsized and large homes showed the steepest declines among single-family residences, down 3.1% and 2.8% year-over-year, respectively. Small homes declined just one percent in the same period. This report, along with other local reports a national overview can be found at www.zillow.com/quarterlies/QuarterlyReports.htm. You can also check out our blog post on the topic here: http://www.zillowblog.com/q2-home-v
I read a recent comment by the CEO of the National Association of Realtors, Dale Stinson, that the "technological relationship" between NAR and Move.com will remain stable. Move.com is the company that runs the realtor.com website. The comments were made on the stage at Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference. Also on the stage was the CEO of Zillow.com, Rich Barton.
Both of these websites, in my opinion, are terrible. The realtor.com website can be called stable, only in the fact that it has barely changed in the last 5 years. It is difficult to navigate and all my clients tell me so. I also have found out that prospective buyers who reply online through realtor.com to a listing, get redirected to someone other than the listing agent. I don't know where they go but a recent buyer called me up and asked why I didn't return her email. She sent it through realtor.com but I never got it. It's hard to return an email you never
Source: Inman TVZillow’s director of community relations, David Gibbons, discusses how the company uses social media to reach out and help people better understand the online service. Gibbons also touches on how the slowing market impacts Zillow.Visit www.owengeronimo.com to find out more about innovative mortgage products and solutions!
According to Seattlepi.com, zillow.com has plans for functionality that will allow homeowners and prospective homeowners to discuss specific local neighborhoods. Social web sites built around connecting people with common interests is nothing new. And, the push toward more localized social web sites has certainly been on the horizon for some time now. This, however, is especially interesting for the real estate industry because of the restrictions Realtors must adhere to. Some demographic information is taboo for Realtors. For instance, Realtors are not allowed to discuss the racial demographics of a specific neighborhood. Zillow users will not be restricted from discussing race, crime, etc.
Based on a post by Jeff Sommers on Zillow.com, it seems that Zillow will be adding a feature making it easier for agents and brokers to upload their listings onto Zillow.com. Rather than uploading each individual listing one by one, a feed will used (guessing here) to upload the listings automatically, auto-populating each field and creating the "listing" on Zillow.com. This will hopefully save agents and brokers time and energy while helping ZIllow increase its number of listings.
This idea is not new - it's being done similarly by Trulia who has agreements with many of the large brokerage firms such as RE/MAX, Century 21 and Keller Williams Realty where all their listings are automatically fed in to Trulia.com.
Zillow seems to be focused on quantity - getting as many listings as possible in order to capture the most amount of web traffic possible. This will surely help with advertising and other forms of revenue. The issue so far though has been the quality of their info
So I posted my condo on Zillow.com. Was very easy and free. They do ask for a credit card but for obvious purposes…they don’t want anyone just posting other peoples properties. Very clever move by Zillow…what they really want is the property info…owner name, photos, etc… by making it free they get all that good stuff.
My condo is a preconstruction so when they tried mapping my condo it was wrong but they let you move the location on the map…very nice. Very nice..and free, however I suspect the following will happen, a bunch of tire kicker, real estate-porn browsers and agents will be looking…man I hope no agents call me…I will be pissed.
The online home valuation and property marketing site Zillow.com passed Yahoo Real Estate to rank sixth among the most visited real estate Web sites in May, Web metrics company Hitwise reported this week. Real estate marketing site HouseValues.com had the largest monthly jump on the top-20 list of most visited sites, going from from 24th in April to 18th in May. Other sites with improved monthly rankings include Century 21 Real Estate (century21.com), ServiceMagic.com, VisualTour.com, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (hud.gov), MLS of Northern Illinois (mlsni.connectmls.com), Move.com, Realtytrac.com, HomeGain.com, Rent.com, remax.com and ZipRealty.com. Sites that had monthly declines in visitor traffic include Yahoo Real Estate, Coldwell Banker Real Estate (coldwellbanker.com), Realtor.com and ApartmentGuide.com.
According to Hitwise, the top 10 real estate Web sites captured 28.9 percent of all visits to Web sites in that category in May. This is an increase from 28
Real estate media player Zillow.com made an interesting but ultimately ineffective effort to reduce staffing this Thursday. Realizing their Finance Department was over staffed and unwilling to pay the expenses of an actual downsizing, Zillow management decided to exploit a strategy of mass drowning and simply not refill the positions of deceased employees.
“The important thing”, said Rich Barton Zillow CEO, “was that it had to look like an accident. If we had simply held their heads in a toilet bowl and flushed, that might have looked bad.”
Thats where Alpine Adventures entered the picture and suggested that an impossibly difficult white water rafting excursion would likely remove the Finance Department plus the lame ducks in Sales and Marketing all in one fell swoop.
Lured onto the raft as a “morale building exercise” and promises of Hot Pockets and 2000g each in World of Warcraft gold, positions were quickly filled.
After
Prediction: Zillow develops and rolls out a nation wide Zillow affiliated Appraisal Franchise system by years end.
That would end all the debate over whether or not a zestimate was accurate and/or an appraisal. Zillow would clearly be offering both a free public online zestimate service and then when it’s time to be really serious, a paid, done by a human real world take it to the bank and ask for money appraisal.
The media hype is largely all in place. An appraisal franchise wouldn’t seem to require a huge capital investment to start up. All they have to do is discount whatever the local rate is a bit and appeal on www.zillow.com to use one of their affiliated professional appraisers. It would seem like it should be a near instant success.
The consumer would save money. Zillow flips the zestimate weakness into a sales pitch for a paid service and makes money. The Zillow appraisers get a constant inflow of appraisal leads from Zillow.com, plus the most outsta
I’m one of the moderates in the great Zillow debate. I see it as having both good and bad points and I cover both viewpoints on the blog. To be honest the bad points seem to get a lot more comments as everyone suddenly feels like going to the gym and working out on the heavy bag. You can slug it as hard as you like and it doesn’t even hurt your hand.
I’ve been noticing recently how demonized Zillow is when I post something good about Zillow and the comments are like…
[cricket chirp]
Actually the fun thing about writing about Zillow is that it actually summons their PR people to your blog. Look in MyBlogLog Readers on the sidebar. $10 says you can see one of them over there now.
/wave
As an aside – after a while you can start to get a feel for who else on the RE.net has Google Alerts set up for their name and you can summon your new minions to your blog at will too. If you really want to screw with them you put their name in the meta tags&nb
We've all heard the buzz about Zillow.com - the online estimation tool that has gathered tax information to create "Zestimates" of what a home is worth in just about every part of the US.The real estate agent community was upset with this new website, with good reason. The "Zestimates" were not always accurate and if you put this powerful tool in a buyer's hands, it could hurt your chances of selling a property if the facts on Zillow were just not right.So, what's new? You can now not only post your listing for sale (for FREE) on Zillow, but you can also update the "Zestimate" by adding facts and improvements as well as comps on why they should update the "Zestimate". Just by putting it on this site "for sale" will get ride of the glaring and most likely "underZestmate", and replaces it with the for sale price. Whew, that is an improvement and a relief.You can also customize your account so that your agent information is displayed on all your listings... maybe you'll find your own
It’s late, I’m tired, so random thoughts on Zillow
On my own house my Make Me Move price is just 75% of my zestimate.
Honestly the fact that AZ appraisers are trying to shut them down just lends them even more public credibility that it is an appraisal.
If a zestimate was called a CMA would we even be having this discussion?
I’ve burned though about $10 of Zillows EZ ads so far. I’ve got 2 ads with zero response and one with just over 1% response. Ads are exactly the same except for headline.
-bedtime now.
Bookmark this article:
Yesterday, Zillow announced a new feature on its' site. The consumer can go onto the site and ask questions about a particular house, such as "Is there a new roof"? The homeowner or anyone else can answer these questions. A buyer can comment about a house that they see such as "they renovated the kitchen and I just love the granite counters!" I may be missing something but I don't think that this will work in New York. I am sure they will have disclaimers however there is some real jeopardy here to uninformed buyers reading comments that may or may not be real. Teenager's roaming around the internet having fun, buyers who lose a bidding war on a property getting back at the home owner or just about anybody can comment there is no control over who is saying what! In Westchester County where attorney's are alway engaged for contracts and where Property Condition Disclosure is still being discussed I shudder at this. I am all for transparency in Real Estate and the sharing of informat
Zillow.com can be a wonderful tool for advertising your house no matter if you are trying the FSBO route, or using an agent. However I see many homes advertised on Zillow that are failing to show themselves well.
Here’s a few easy steps to get you looking better.
1. Use Lots Of Photos – You simply must have multiple photos of your house for people to see. The more photos you have, the better chance of a sale you have. Buyers just assume a lack of photos implies that the house isn’t worth looking at. It’s also important to use a good quality camera, ideally with a wide angled lens, to get the best results. Also it’s well worth the extra few minutes to edit your photos. Just simple things like light balancing, cropping and correcting camera rotation make a huge difference in the final product.
2. Price Near The Zestimate – Not so key for the Make Me Move option, but if you are FSBO or sale by agent this is critical. Buyers will automatically
Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Pacoima. Zillow says $457,000 but Listed at $225,000? Who Would Have thought 770 Square Feet Would Cause Such a Discrepancy!
It is official. No one...
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I have found how Zillow prices their homes. Please, this is definitely confidential information so I hope that we can keep this between us bloggers. I have found their head algorithm engineers and...
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The last couple of days have seen a feeding frenzy by real estate bloggers, taking on the company many love – or love to hate – Zillow. Real estate bloggers and their readers/commenters have expressed every opinion in the full range from "Greatest thing ever in the world," to ...
The last couple of days have seen a feeding frenzy by real estate bloggers, taking on the company many love – or love to hate – Zillow. Real estate bloggers and their readers/commenters have expressed every opinion in the full range from "Greatest thing ever in the world," to ...
Rich Barton, CEO of Zillow.com has launched what I have expected since inception - a mortgage platform. I have not got a chance to dig-in yet and check out the structure of how this works...but from the surface it looks similar to a LendingTree, but at a Loan Officer ...
