Seattle based Zillow is a website that allows people to get information on 68 million homes in the United States (such as an estimated value, size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc.). On Wednesday morning they are releasing new features which will allow users to contribute updated and detailed information about their own homes to Zillow’s national database.
This owner information will appear on an information page about a property along with Zillow gathered information (see screen shot below). If some of the information about a home is incorrect or outdated, users will have the opportunity to correct that. Additional information on valuation can also be included, and Zillow will use that information in determining an updated estimate of the home’s value.Before adding any information users must complete a verification process to claim a home.
I would expect people to be aggressive about updating Zillow information when they put their home up for sale.
Zillow continues to innovate and execute well. They’ve raised a massive $57 million in venture funding to date, and are deeply integrated into Yahoo Real Estate. Our previous posts on Zillow are here.
This is a great application considering the recent decline in real estate sales. Web 2.0 has so many great people centered web apps. I hope that their data is secured because we don’t want any surprises in 2 months or so.
Web 2.0 can help you sell it! What are you selling?
In real estate it’s Web 1.88. You forgot the agent’s 6% commission.
Info on all bathrooms? Awesome, next time I go to a friends place I won’t need to ask where the bathroom is..
we have been having a serious dialogue with david z. from zillow recently which just so happened to include some of the changes zillow is now proposing. if you read our posts, you will see that zillow was not considering this before. did sellsius° real estate actually have some influence here? i’ll let you guys decide that. the important thing is that it’s better for consumers and homeowners….
here’s the link: http://blog.sel...ate.com/?p=2000
-rudy.sellsius°
ps – i’m sure my partner will chime in on this news as well……
To David:
It just goes to prove that the facts supporting a zestimate can be wrong, rendering the zestimate defective—sometimes greatly so. To leave the data uncorrected was a serious flaw. But now, unless a seller decides to correct the data, the risk of great inaccuracy still looms, doesn’t it? You don’t need to answer that.
Still, this is a huge step in the right direction to get accurate “facts”. Freshness & completeness of data are the next hurdles.
I feel some vindication that our (sellsius, bloodhound & other real estate blogs) objections to zillow’s methodology & serious shortcomings has caused zillow to take this step. It is a credit when someone recognizes their flaws, takes constructive criticism & does something about it. But why did you object so strenuously when these criticisms were first brought to bear? Next things to work on are stale public tax & sales data and the “elusive unzillowables”.
Good luck.
I meant David of Zillow
That’s a good move on Zillow’s part. It’s about time someone started embracign the massive amounts of homeowners who want to input data on their properties. PropSmart does this to some extent.
There is a database war in the real estate application market that’s going on – whoever wins the crowds and opens up the system will win.
While I think more and accurate information is a good thing, it wasn’t clear on how accuracy was being achieved. There is always the possibility that an owner could misrepresent his/her property in order for the Zestimate to be higher. Additionally, what prevents a non-owner from adding/changing data?
In fact, I would think that there could be more potential for non-owners to add data, especially potential buyers who have already seen the property. I’ve just started house hunting myself, and I have a massive database of houses that I’ve seen, with very detailed notes and information.
The question is what’s the incentive to be accurate or not, and what parties can provide such information.
I think this is a well-intented idea to remedy the issue of inaccurate zestimates…however, after signing in and trying out the process myself, I think there might be some issues — it dertermines whether or not you are the owner of the prop by asking you to select from a list of possible owners, the list seems accurate but there are no verification built in to check whether I am the acutal owner or not, the only thing you’d do is check a box that “promises” you are not lying
I can’t imagine this honor system won’t be abused by some but on the other hand, the only option to verify owner identity probably would have required SSN…maybe something for zillow to consider whether it’s an option or requirement.
Is there any motivaiton for me to update my home’s information if I’m not selling it? Why would people do this?
Interesting….Let’s see how this plays out once the real esate mania dies down over the next several quarters.
The next step would be to allow home owners to post photos of their home and may be the next step after that would be to disintermediate the realtors by allowing a ‘For Sale’ thing for a nominal fees.
Great idea if you are looking to be robbed! I think there is a middle ground, remember you can’t be an anoun (like craigs list and ebay) on zillow.
Im not negative, I like Zillow for what it is
do you think owners should have the right to Opt-Out of their zestimate?
should zillow have a conspicuous disclaimer on the home page and next to their 2 estimates?
see our poll here:
http://blog.sel...ate.com/?p=2114
I’ve found Zillow’s data, at least in San Francisco, to be dramatically inaccurate for most properties I look up. Other than when you’re getting ready to sell, I’m not sure why anyone would volunteer information about their property to this database.
[...] It seams that some people take credit of the new functionality added on Zillow (see the comments on the techcrunch post). Please, don’t underestimate the people at Zillow. I don’t know about their product roadmap but I’m absolute convinced that this has been on their horizon from the start. I also believe Ardell at Seattle Rain City Guide is on to the next step in her comment to this post… [...]
The house data on the site in accurate, what a waste of time.
I looked up information in my area and found it to be wildly inaccurate. I suspect their initial sources of information are outdated, as the newest house on their maps of this area predate mine by a decade. If I look at heat maps from this county and the adjacent county, there’s a clear division showing almost no data for the adjacent county. I’m seeing houses plunked down in the middle of undeveloped forest and industrial logging sites, so their map accruacy is off considerably. The only thing that was in the ballpark was valuations of some of the older homes in the area, which surprised me. I expected the valuations to be the least accurate element of the mix.
Overall it looks like they have a long way to go regarding data accuracy.
Should an owner be concerned that the local tax assessor will search zillow for homes whose owners have updated home facts (beds/baths/sq.ft) and improvements (pool, deck, etc) to then re-assess those owners and send them a higher tax bill? How could the owner object if it was the owner who upped the value?
I asked this question on zillowblog and got no reply. TechCrunch readers, do you have any thoughts on this?
It would be much wiser fo companies like Zillow to pare up with real estate agencies or maby to get deals from MLS so they can back their work with some solid market data. Even if I wanted to update the value of my property, will that change the market value? Probably not and I can bet that those who will update, will provide amounts much higher of what the real value is…. just another 2 cents.