|
Written by Becky
|
|
Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
|
Zillow is a fast rising Internet realty service which provides people with home value estimates (it averages about 4 million visits a month from net goers). It was started up in 2006 by two ex Microsoft Executives, Richard Barton and Lloyd Frink. They are also the founders of Expedia.com This site allows one to see the values of millions of U.S. homes (their Zestimate) regardless of whether they are for sale or not. So far they average about 52 million house values. It also illustrates pertinent home/realty information when available, such as aerial home view, prices of area homes, sq foot per home, # bed and baths, increase/decrease in home values, etc. Besides partnering with Microsoft to use Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye View to show aerial photos taken from plane rather then just satellite, Zillow has also added 3 new options for users: to post homes for sale use ¨Make Me Move¨ a pre market tool The Zillow Wiki, a type of Wikipedia search engine on real estate. It also allows contributions of information from all users.
Many realtors are apprehensive of or against Zillow. They feel the estimates provided are not accurate as they do not account for such ¨unzillowables¨, things like current remodeling, community factors that could detract or add to value, necessity of others to sale which might make them lessen a value or increase it, etc. These are all things many real estate agents take into account and they don’t want that buyers/sellers use zillow thinking it is an actual representation and then get upset when an actual realtor tells them that A: their home isn’t worth that much, or that if they are a buyer that their price range is ridiculous for the areas they are looking at. Of course then there is the other side of the coin, maybe it is good that sites like this give buyers/sellers more of and idea and hand in their own buying/selling needs. |
