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December 6, 2006

Zillow Knows That Everyone Has A Price

alain

60 comments »

Home listing site Zillow is making it possible to shop for homes that are not necessarily for sale with their new Make Me Move function, which launches on Thursday. Home owners who may have no intention of moving, but certainly would for the right price, can list information about their homes on Make Me Move so that gutsy buyers can try to make a deal.

“What number would it take for you to call the movers and hand over your keys?” said Lloyd Frink, Zillow’s co-founder and president, in a release about the new function. “Make Me Move is our twist on the traditional ‘For Sale’ sign.”

A homeowner can post a Make Me Move price without exposing any personal information. Zillow then enables interested buyers to contact the owner through an email “anonymizer.” The service is free.

Free is the magic word at Zillow lately because the company also announced that it will provide free listings for all home owners and realtors. Listings can include photos, and realtors can also create Web sites for each listing.

Zillow’s third new function is the Real Estate Wiki, which has hundreds of articles on buying, selling, financing, or any topic a owner/buyer might need. Wiki visitors can edit or comment on articles, or create new articles.

These new new announcements are undoubtedly Zillow’s efforts to continue hosting as much real estate information on their site as possible. It’s a sign that they have enough traffic to sell ads and do not need user money to survive. The company launched in early 2006 and has made major announcements all year, including 3D maps, open APIs, and many large rounds of funding. The company claimed 3.2 million users and 70 million home listings as of November.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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Comments

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  1. Denver Wang

    December 6th, 2006 at 9:40 pm

    The title of this article is funny.

    http://www.ezecho.com

  2. FK OFF WANG

    December 6th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    Wang - stop spamming the fking board. Your site sucks, and you cant even write English fluently.

    Get the hint?

  3. Ken

    December 6th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

    Can’t wait to see how many fake listings get put on there…

    This could be mint for the luxury market, though.

  4. Molly

    December 6th, 2006 at 10:08 pm

    lol @#2! Right before I saw your comment, I was thinking, why does he always have to add his website to his comments. You read my mind.

  5. People Finder

    December 6th, 2006 at 10:29 pm

    I like the zillow site. It is very useful for home valuation research, but I am not so sure about this new “feature”.

  6. rudolph d. bachraty III

    December 6th, 2006 at 11:01 pm

    all along we felt that zillow would allow people to post their listings. it was a no brainer on their part.

  7. Kyle

    December 6th, 2006 at 11:14 pm

    Gregg Swann from the BloodhoundBlog Speculates a few predictions of new applications that might be built from the for-sale Zillow.com API listing data.

  8. Fashion Industry Ceo

    December 6th, 2006 at 11:35 pm

    Now I actually liked this site…well i like anything dealing with real estate so lol….but fake listings will definetly be a problem in my opinion.

  9. Rohail

    December 6th, 2006 at 11:39 pm

    Zillow’s never really been accurate for me. I’ve always gotten much more undervalued prices than what the homes around my area are selling for. My first comment here at TC so I guess I get to leave my site ;).

    http://www.rohailrizvi.com

  10. Say No to Crack

    December 7th, 2006 at 12:09 am

    Rohail - unless you are leaving a relevant link, your comment will probably be deleted (and you might even be blacklisted).

  11. Say No to Crack

    December 7th, 2006 at 12:11 am

    This is VERY cool … if anyone is looking to move to a nice 4 BR home north of Baltimore, Make Me Move, I’m listed!

  12. Faisal

    December 7th, 2006 at 12:31 am

    3.2 million users?

    I thought sirius buyers will always go through a real estate agent , i know i do.

  13. Randy Stewart

    December 7th, 2006 at 12:42 am

    I’ve got some screenshots over on http://blog.stewtopia.com. The site was briefly back up but appears to be down now.

    Randy

  14. Kevin Boer

    December 7th, 2006 at 12:58 am

    Since Zillow’s business model is selling ads, and presumably they would want Realtors to be a big part of their advertising base, it’ll be very interesting to watch this play out since Realtors by and large find Zillow threatening enough as it was, and will find it even more threatening now that it appears to be aiming to become the de facto national MLS.

  15. RBA

    December 7th, 2006 at 1:18 am

    I’ve been shopping for a home recently and I’ve been using Zillow extensively. Its numbers are often misleading and you must always take them with a grain of salt. For example:

    - A home that sells for 670k gets a Zillow estimate of 780k, yet it’s been for sale since August. And it’s not selling.
    - A home listed in Zillow for 640k goes on the market last monday at $680k and sells within 3 days at the asking price.

    Of course, I cannot ask Zillow to know everything about every home in the country. Has the owner just got extensive remodeling? How the heck will Zillow know on its own?

    But still, it is a very good tool to get, say, a third opinion, and it doesn’t hurt to check. One of the most interesting tools it has is being able to review the sale history. That’s not something that you can actually use when you’re ready to purchase a home - perhaps the previous buyer got it 3 months ago at a bargain price because the seller was VERY motivated, the buyer is a great negotiator and after buying it, the new owner turned the house around in remodeling and what not. And if the house sold 15 years ago, the price paid back then means nothing today. But still, it’s a neat tool, and that information so far it seems to be accurate. Plus you can ask your friend how much he paid, and then verify whether he’s telling the truth :-)

  16. Rajeev Vashisht

    December 7th, 2006 at 3:50 am

    Well compares to getting a hollywood star to work in a project he is not interested in.

    http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

  17. FK OFF WANG

    December 7th, 2006 at 4:05 am

    @16 - tell us where you sourced that, where Hurley said that and then I’ll believe it.

    Personally, I think what you have written is full of shit for a few reasons.
    1) Because I have read about 30 articles where it specifically states that all of the youtube.com founders busted their asses working to pull it together and “6 hours each week for 2 months” means a whopping 48 hours was spent creating Youtube - and that is ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.
    2) If you even knew how to program 1) would be the planning that went into it not the programming so your apparent “article” is full of shit there.
    3) A Google Search for some of the article showed nothing………except this same article posted by you in other places.
    4) Stop the bullshit and leave the blokes that created youtube, got rich of youtube and now are still successful - be successful.

    Have a cry somewhere else fk face.

    Also - FK OFF WANG and stop spamming

  18. Mark

    December 7th, 2006 at 6:41 am

    @16

    What relation does your drivel about Youtube have to Zillow? Go to the right board!

  19. Sean

    December 7th, 2006 at 6:58 am

    Used the site before. It’s nice. “Make me move” … I like it!!

  20. Vishy Venugopalan

    December 7th, 2006 at 7:12 am

    The Make Me Move ‘feature’ seems quite innovative but could have done with better timing. With the housing market rapidly cooling (as of this writing anyway), demand is not so high that properties not listed on traditional channels will actually find buyers. If they had put this out maybe 18 months ago, they might have made some cash, assuming they’ll take a cut of the Make Me Move proceeds. As posters like RBA above have noted, Zillow does not always take market realities into account; their rollout of this feature at this time seems gimmicky at best and disingenuous at worst.

  21. Dave

    December 7th, 2006 at 7:45 am

    Trulia says “Hey - you can’t do that!”

    This is the oldest model in the book. It is the drug dealer model. Realtors have been seen as easy prey because they love to (have to) spend money on advertising. Give it away for free and see who comes back for more…it is just like an after school special.

    Anyway, I’m not sure when they will start implementing fees - but I can assure you - fees will be coming.

    For the record - I think that the people at Zillow have done some great things for the real estate community. They have been extremely unselfish (started/host/moderate) with the carnival of realestate blogs.

    Are they trying to build a cathedral or a bazaar? Time will only tell.

  22. Matthew Stotts

    December 7th, 2006 at 8:26 am

    I think Zillow is great, and use it and recommend it to friends. However, this post seems to have ommited the fact that Reply.com, which I also use and recommend regularly, has this unsolicited offer feature and launched it in August of this year - http://www.reply.com/r_Corpora....._08_22.asp

  23. MetroBellevue

    December 7th, 2006 at 8:49 am

    Zillow is great. While their Zestimates are just that…estimates, they still provide valuable information for buyers and sellers alike.

  24. Joel Burslem

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:05 am

    Redfin filed a patent application earlier this year for the same business model. I wonder if that will come back to haunt Zillow?

  25. Fraser

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:17 am

    I wish Zillow would expand into Canada…

  26. Adrian Keys

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:25 am

    I see some neagtive comments but this awesome…talk about a true market. It may infact lead to stabilzation of the current market and when the time is right may be a factor in expanded market activity.

    I am not an expert but certainly if someone puts a price on the table that I cant refuse, it may suddenly push me to start thinking about something that was not even on the horizon.

    If this takes off the authorities may very well have to create a new category of real estate sales.

    http://www.revafinancial.squarespace.com

  27. Zoltan Szendro

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:49 am

    It only shows how fast, extremely fast the software industry and how short software lifecycles have become nowadays. We released our real estate wiki at http://www.RealKi.com two weeks ago and are just ready to launch the PR and marketing campaign to start generating content. We believe we are going to nicely coexist with Zillow. Congratulations to Zillow on their new product release.

    Zoltan Szendro
    RealBird Inc.

    http://www.realki.com

  28. Jason Fried

    December 7th, 2006 at 10:09 am

    I heard Zillow has 350 people and a really expensive office in downtown Seattle. That’s all I wanted to say.

  29. Spencer

    December 7th, 2006 at 10:15 am

    Responding to Jason Fried (#29) above:

    Jason, Spencer from Zillow here.
    We actually have about 140 employees, not 350. We have lots of job openings (mostly developers and advertising salespeople), but not enough to get us to 350 any time soon.
    We do indeed have very nice office space in downtown Seattle (the 41st and 46th floor of the Wells Fargo Tower). After all, we are a real estate company, right?

  30. Anita @ Say No to Crack

    December 7th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Spencer - need any smart remote folks living on the East Coast ;)

    BTW - Love the site, and wish you’d add data for the York County, PA area (I know, it’s tough to catalog the boondoggles, even if it is really a suburb of Baltimore).

  31. webduck

    December 7th, 2006 at 2:15 pm

    I like Zillow, and this might become a good feature if I should ever have a hard time selling my home. Some features of Zillow make it hard to really see what the value of my improvements might do to my asking price though. Some things like added R-value to the house and updated fuse boxes are hard to put a dollar amount on for value.

  32. Drew M from Zillow

    December 7th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    Drew from Zillow here.
    Responding to Vishy (#21)- I just want to clarify that Zillow will not be taking a cut of Make Me Move transactions.

  33. David Mackey

    December 7th, 2006 at 7:20 pm

    I used Zillow extensively in my house search, and it was a helpful metric in the decision. I love the site and am excited about these new innovations.

  34. Bellame

    January 22nd, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    buy phentermine.

  35. john

    January 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

    A month ago, zillow had the correct square footage for my house. Today, the Zestimate has gone up but the square footage is now 400sq feet less. Amazingly inaccurate. It also says my house is now a brick house(guess that’s why the estimate went up!).

    So they made the data worse? And I’m supposed to correct this? You know buyers will use this against buying my house… I mean their data is dead wrong. And they updated good data with bad data. Poor.

  36. David G from Zillow.com

    January 29th, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Hi, this is DavidG from Zillow.com

    john — please send me your address and I’ll investigate [davidg at z].

  37. Colin

    February 9th, 2007 at 10:45 am

    This is actually a good idea beyond the obvious.

    It allows a potential seller to offer their home for sale without it showing up in the MLS as a listed property. At least I am assuming it won’t show up.

    The problem many home sellers face right now is that once they list a property tradtionally, they can’t turn around a refinance the property for 6 months after the listing expiration with most banks and lenders.

    This is a problem as many homeowners who can’t sell often panic and look to refinance to grab the equity in their home.

  38. emma berarducci

    March 4th, 2007 at 6:23 pm

    I would like to list a condo I own — how do I do that?

  39. sara b

    March 5th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    Sara from Zillow
    response to #38
    All you need to do is go to the site and click on the Post For Sale tab, and walk through the steps. It is free for anyone to post their house for sale on the site, and you can upload unlimited photos of the home.

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