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Zillow.com
Screenshot of the homepage
URL	http://www.zillow.com/
Slogan	Your Edge In Real Estate
Alexa rank	2,7995
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Real estate
Registration	Optional
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink
Created by
Launched	February 08, 2006
Current status	Active

Zillow.com is an online real estate service company which launched its beta service on February 8, 2006. It was founded by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, a pair of former Microsoft executives and the founders of the Expedia travel company. Zillow was created to help people get home value estimates. In its initial stages, the site has been met with criticism from real estate agents who believe that the values given on some homes are overvalued or undervalued and not a true reflection of the value of the home.

Contents 1 Features 2 Zestimate 3 Criticisms 4 Competitors 5 In different jurisdictions 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Zillow allows users to see the value of millions of homes across the United States, not just those up for sale. In addition to giving value estimates of homes, it offers several unique features including value changes of each home in a given time frame (e.g., 1, 5, or 10 years), aerial views of homes, and prices of homes in the area. Where it can access appropriate data, it also provides basic information on a given home such as square footage and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Users can also get current estimates of homes if there was a significant change made, such as a recently remodeled kitchen.^[1]

Zillow recently teamed up with Microsoft to offer Microsoft's Bird's Eye View, a feature in Microsoft Virtual Earth, that shows, in certain areas, clearer aerial photographs taken from airplanes rather than conventional satellite imagery. Zillow uses this functionality for entertainment-focused features such as "Famous TV Homes" on the zillow.com site.

In December 2006, Zillow launched three new pieces of functionality: the ability to post homes for sale, the ability to set a "Make Me Move" price (an informal way to pre-market a home), and a real estate wiki. The Zillow Wiki (March 2007) defines a wiki as "a shared source of information that anyone can contribute to. The end product combines knowledge from diverse resources, and is therefore richer than if it were the product of one author." The copyright status of the content does not appear to be specified. From use of the term "wiki" one is led to assume that it uses a free documentation license such as GNU Free Documentation License.

Zillow has stated that it is a media company and as of 2007 it is the #2 online real estate brand.^[2] Although Zillow generates revenue from online advertising it also holds real estate brokerage licenses in various states.

Zillow comes up with a "Zestimate" for a house, based on a range of publicly available information, including sales of comparable houses in a neighborhood.^[3] Zestimate does not take into consideration factors like recent remodeling, quality of school district, or local amenities, although there is an option to update the information for a particular home. The accuracy of the Zestimate varies by location depending on how much information is publicly available, but Zillow allows users to check the accuracy of Zestimates in their own region against actual sales.^[4]

Much of the criticism surrounding the site comes from those who believe that buyers and sellers may not be given accurate data. For example, Houston provides the least accurate data on the site.^[5] Moreover, large pockets of New York, Utah, and Idaho are not yet covered by Zillow.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition filed a complaint in October 2006 with the Federal Trade Commission^[6] stating that Zillow is “intentionally misleading consumers and real-estate professionals to rely upon the accuracy of its valuation services despite the full knowledge of the company officials that their valuation Automated Valuation Model (AVM) mechanism is highly inaccurate and misleading.”

A recent June 2007 article in The Washington Post magnifies how inaccurate Zillow can be, such as wrong property locations and house sales that are over $100,000 in price difference from the Zestimate.^[7] A quick check by some owners find properties of the same location, size, lot size and construction year thousands of dollars apart, with one appreciating ten of thousands in one month and the other depreciating even though comparable properties should be exactly the same. Though Zillow states they provide a range for the estimate and are not an appraisal service, many buyers are treating it as such and using Zillow's information to make offers.

Real estate brokers, who are concerned that their role may be diminished as more people rely on Zillow, state that the site does not give an accurate reflection and that other factors must be taken into consideration in buying or selling a home. Realtors with specific market knowledge are more likely to know specific factors affecting the sale of a home such as the overall condition of the home, domestic issues such as divorce, job transfer pressures, etc. These factors have been called unzillowables, a term coined in the real estate blogosphere^[8]. The industry fear arises from the possibility that increasing numbers of users will trust Internet-based valuation companies like Zillow to give good "ballpark" figures. As such, such sites may become a source of competition for real estate agents who, in many jurisdictions, may previously have had exclusive control of this information.

HouseFront and eppraisal.com provide data on more properties than Zillow^{[citation needed]}, up to 100 million homes. A review of these websites find value estimates ten of thousands of dollars different from Zillow.^{[citation needed]}

In many states, one example being Maryland,^[9] and another being Tennessee,^[10] information on the transfer prices of real estate is readily available and accessible by the general public and is not exclusively held in realtors' databases. In these instances, where it can capture and present such data, Zillow is likely to provide a more accurate assessment of value.^{[citation needed]}

• Real estate broker
• Real estate trends
• Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
• Reduced-commission MLS Listings

• Zillow.com
• Interview with Zillow's CFO, Spencer Rascoff
• Interview with the Zillow development team
• Zillow Blog
• Zillow API Network