this Site

I, too, was/am a doubter of whether Zillow will succeed in the long run, but joining forces with bigger players certainly can help. Still have my doubts.

I do wish those Zillow bloggers would pay attention to mine though…they might learn a thing or two about SF.

thefrontsteps.com

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http://www.xencasino.com

Case in point, the house I currently rent was Zestimated at $631K in October 2006, $606K in September 2007, $577K in December 2007, and now it’s $970K as of January 3, 2008. (See, down is up!)

The comps listed were geographically so far from anything close to my neighborhood, I had to coddle my own comps (with the help of Homeseekers) for the period since July 2007 and came up with $875K, $935K, and two almost impossible to find (which I’m sure Zillow tried to bury to artificially bouy their figures), $684K and $811K. Which gives me an average of $825K for sales between July and December. If Trulia’s average price-to-square footage is accurate, I should be in the $603K area; Homeseekers/Cyberhomes puts this home’s value at $672K (very close to the $684 actual sale in September.)

My take on all of this is that Zillow anticipates the market continuing to plunge, so by raising their Zestimates, they can keep their core seller clientele happy while sliding their Zestimates down over the ensuing year. We buyers, relying on Cyberhomes, Trulia and MLS, won’t buy this year until Zillow and sellers are back on planet earth after they all chase the market down. 10% off? By my calculations, Zillow is at least 14% over comps, and 30% off what any sane person would truly value the house at today (and that’s before this year’s inevitable plunge.)

Incidentally, there has been zero upgrade on this house since it’s birth in the late 50’s. The county assessor’s values this home at $331K.

The most valuable information for a quick assessment? Average Price vs. Living Area on Cyberhomes/Homeseekers got it close to right for what the market is doing today ($800-835K); or Zillow’s low end of the Value range and knock of 5-10% ($820.) But the actual worth of the house? Anything over $700K (today) for this house is craziness (today’s Zillow’s Market Value Chart on January 2004 value.)

I personally wouldn’t spend a dime over $625K.

If you look at their aggregate data (trends, etc), they’re pretty impressively good. But if you look at any one data point, they’re inevitably pretty bad. The rub is that their business model and what their users look at is all about individual data points (single properties), which highlights the worst aspect of their data, rather than aggregate trends, which would highlight the best.

It’s a tricky situation.

“Zillow is the first and only site in the RE space that is targeted at the SELLER”

not really… June 2000 - Domainia.com - here is a snap shot from then.

http://web.archive.org/web/200.....ainia.com/

I do agree that Z is great to open up discussions regarding true value.

As a real estate professional who primarily lists homes for sale for a living, I welcome those Zestimate discussions with homeowners, you see, I know who has the parking, the Viking 6 burner range, the exotic hardwoods, and I am perfectly postioned and prepared to market those homes and all their unique features. You see, Seattle, a home is not a plane ticket.

Yes, Z may have an uphill battle to profitability but this current market may help them in my opinion as many consumers are very concerned about property values as can you see in search trends for “property / home / house value” keywords. Z is publicly known as the go-to site for values.

Zestimates will always be off on the high end / low end properties as the individual characteristics of these affect value much more than a traditional tract home. You could get three licensed appraisers on a high-end home and each will come up with a different value.

Here is where most the real estate sites fail in my opinion….

“Zillow lists only 400,000 homes that are for sale, out of about 4 million nationwide. A deal with real-estate publisher Network Communications will bring that total to 900,000. Trulia, in comparison, has 2 million.”

The reality is there is about 4.5 million listed homes according to NAR, then there is another 800K new homes for sale and then there is probably about 1 million homes are for sale by owner. The listing pie is probably closer to 6 million listings. The biggest site, Realtor has maybe 3.8 - 4 mill listings (and will never have the FSBO) of about 67% of total listing inventory, T has maybe 33% and Z even less.

As consumers making the largest investment decision all using may make it difficult to make an “investment” decision if you only see 50% of your available options? Imagine a Schwab that only offered 2500 stocks to pick from?

This sites will also face competition as R seems to be ramping up its efforts with a new beta and more SEO and the brokerages / franchises themselves will probably begin doing the same.

@antje - I heard about some banks starting to utilize Zillow as an estimate tool and that is sort of scary. They are welcome, i suppose, but its bad business to rely on that as their means of determining valuation of a house.

When the president of the company makes statements about Zestimates like:
“…Frink notes that a third of the site’s Zestimates across the country fall within five percent of the selling price, and that half are within 10 percent.” - its not an estimate of value. Its a sometimes not even in the ballpark GUESS.

I like Zillow though to look at it and see my (old) neighbour’s house prices…

based on these numbers there is a good chance that 1/3 are over 20% off, possibly 30%+, and it is a fact that 1/2 are over 10% off.

That’s over $50K on a $500,000 home

It’s a fun service just not that helpful, yet.

December Neilsen data for Zillow is:

2.6 million unique visitors
Time Per Person: 8.29 minutes
Total Page Views 43 million
Web Pages Per Person 17

I hope this helps.

bookmarked @ http://livbit.com