Everybody's talking about Zillow.com, a new web-service that allows the user to punch in an address, and immediately get an estimate Zestimate (ugh, I know) of the home's market rate, as well as all of the other homes in the neighborhood. It's a good commercial application of the Google maps/Google earth mashup stuff that everyone loves. For a real-estate obsessed populace (still), this looks like it could be pretty big
Matt Stichnoth at bankstocks.com sums it up "A new internet verb is born", which, given the emergence of "To Google" as a verb, is quite a compliment--"Oh, have you Zillowed the house yet".
(Speaking of internet verbs, did anyone ever see the episode of The OC in which one of the characters suggests to another, that he should "A9.com" a potential crush"---heh. Actually, Amazon's search engine, A9.com has been the subject of some blog-borne discussion, that we won't bother getting in to. Suffice to say, the project has been a total wreck, with one of their top guys recently defecting to the evil empire [google]).
If Zillow actually lives up to its claims, that it's Zestimates are a good reflection of market price, it should, in theory, make housing markets more efficients. There's been enough stories, of developers in NYC and elsewhere, moving prices up and down (in the hundreds of thousands) in a seemingly arbitrary manner. Seems like if consumers know the value of the surrounding property, this should be harder to do.
It's also amusing that Zillow claims to give the user an edge. Every financial publication in the world claims this, even The Journal, which everybody reads. I wonder if they'll take it down once Zillowing is standard practice.
Get back to me when it's not a flash site.
I guess looking up comps in one place instead of four is nice, but I can look up transactions and tax records and such online myself, no flash required.
Posted by: wcw | February 09, 2006 at 07:52 PM
I checked several properties on this website and it appears that the valuations are about 10% too high across the board.
Posted by: Harold Merkow | February 09, 2006 at 08:08 PM
I think that Zillow will become the "Kelly BlueBook" of Real Esatate. But, I am skeptical of the algorithm they use. My neighbor's house is larger, nicer and on twice a acreage, yet came in at less than ours.
Posted by: James Gillespy | February 09, 2006 at 11:53 PM