Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market
If you're interested in the red-hot real estate market (or just curious about the value of your home and your neighbours!), Zillow.com has potential to become a valuable tool to quickly find the value of more than 40 million homes in the U.S. It's easy to use and provides information that used to be available to real estate agents. Using the clean and easy interface (there's no requirement to register), a search of a U.S. address produces a home's value, details (# of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size etc.) and the value of comparable homes. A beta version of Zillow.com launched today, although you may have some trouble accessing it due to high traffic volume. The company, started by a group of ex-Expedia.com executives including CEO Rich Barton, said the beta is "just the first step in our long-term mission to empower everyone with information and tools to help them take control of the scary, frustrating and exciting process of buying and selling a home". As for the all-important question of how Zillow plans to make money, it will be from advertising. The company has raised $32-million in venture capital
P.S. How about expanding Zillow into Canada? We need some competition for the Multiple Listing Service!
Update: The domain Zillow.ca is owned by Stuart MacDonald, who started Expedia.ca before becoming senior vice-president of marketing for Expedia.com.
February 8th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Thanks for the post, Mark. A bunch of really smart folks, many of them friends and former Expedia colleagues of mine, have been pouring their hearts and brains into making this happen, so positive feedback (heck, any and all feedback - this is a *real* beta ;-)) is most welcome! I have to say that I think they have done some great work.
As far as a Canadian site goes, thanks for the encouragement but there are no immediate plans to bring the service North.
– Stuart
February 8th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
stuart,
it looks like zillow did well out the gate with stories in the NYT, seattle intelligencer and a long run near the top of memeorandum. it will be interesting to see how much traffic they get and how their advertising model evolves.
February 8th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but this type of site will never show up in Canada. Our federal/provincial privacy laws (PIPEDA) make it extremely difficult to obtain real estate sales info from sources such as municipal assessment offices and the like. In fact, privacy laws limit realtors like myself the type and amount of data we can research from such agencies as Ontario's Municipal Property Assessment Corp. (MPAC).
For clarification, MLS is not a public tool, but is a realtor tool. There are public portals like MLS.ca, and there seems to be a common misconception that this is a national MLS site, which of course, it is not.
February 9th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I think Canada is a tad bit over regulated when it comes to real estate development and raising capital. Archaic privacy laws that limit the amount of information available for research is something that I disagree with. I'm a fan of the website, thanks for the blogs. If you ever want to check out a conservative porn columinist, visit http://www.ilovepopwhore.com.
Warmly,
Tatum
February 26th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
i am not sure i would call Zillow.com nor http://www.HomePricemaps.com DATA PORN, i mean aren’t we helping the consumer make better informed decisions, thus not relying upon the realtor as much, or at least giving the consumer the ability to know when his realtor is screwing him over?
since when is that porn?
April 5th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Anyone heard of Duru? Looks like a new Real Estate listing site…kinda cool and different. Check it out: goDuru.com