Comments on: Finding Home Values in Web Search

By: Bulgarian properties

Bulgarian properties — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 12:13:22 +0000

This is very useful idea.
It should help in any way, the best one is that it can be expanded in several way to be more useful.
I mean the DB should be updated also.

By: Nancy

Nancy — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:23:24 +0000

I logged on to Zillow.com for the first time today to find out what all the fuss is about. I like the site – it provided information regarding property taxes and actual recent selling prices (as opposed to market asking prices) of comparable properties to provide a starting place for valuing a property. This is the same information I obtained from the County Assessor’s site. Although I’m not lauding the site, as an investor I will certainly add it to my toolkit when determining the difference between hard numbers value and market value when making an investment decision.

By: rvakil

rvakil — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 09:51:03 +0000

Good idea. Certainly would also be relevant to international markets…

By: Karen

Karen — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:35:32 +0000

My home, as well as the neighborhood, has been built for almost two years, and it’s still shows as acres of dirt lots. No homes or values.
When is Yahoo or Zillow going to update their database???

By: Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 05:18:45 +0000

Very nice, but when I dig into it, it appears that it’s all Zillow information. What exactly is Yahoo Real Estate adding other than an easy way to get to the data itself, Fred and group?

By: Jones

Jones — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 09:47:59 +0000

Fascinating, of the 6 houses I’ve lived in, this found not a single one of them. Well, I’m sure it’s a really great product…Probably only works with really ‘important’ places like California or New York.

By: anne

anne — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 05:55:55 +0000

I remain very skeptical.

When Zillow was first available, I wasn’t that surprised to see wild variations on the estimates for homes in my neighborhood considering the wide variety of homes. For example, my house is over 125 years old and the house across the street is 2 years old. But the estimates are just as wild now.

Several of the homes, old and new, in the neighborhood don’t appear to be in the database. Most of the information on lot size, square feet, and features/rooms for the homes on our block is missing or wrong.

The comps are the most unrealistic item. It’s listing 1970’s tract housing on postage stamp lots across the highway for almost all the comps for the 100 year old homes on quarter to half acre lots in this neighborhood.

By: asurroca

asurroca — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:48:45 +0000

I checked out zillow.com before and I also noticed that its estimates have a tendency to be off somewhat. Naturally, it’s not going to be as accurate as getting a comparative market analysis.

I’m glad to see this feature on Yahoo! Real Estate though, and I imagine that this signals a facelift similar to Yahoo! Tech, Yahoo! Autos, etc.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:26:38 +0000

When I use the search within Yahoo it does not find my house. I get no homes were found at address. Please try another address. If I go to zillow.com it finds my home fine.

Just want to let you know something is not working right.

Tim

By: _Jon

_Jon — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:14:09 +0000

I think it is great that you have improved your product. I have found it useful in the past.

I have a small bit of concern wrt to zillow.
I think zillow has a lot of potential, but its data doesn’t seem to have “stabilized” yet. I did a lot of poking around with values of homes around the US during the first few months of this year (2006) after zillow.com launched. I noticed a disturbing trend – many homes that I checked had their home values swing dramatically (some lower, some higher) at about the same time as zillow.com went live.

It almost appeared that a bit of quantum physics was occuring – as zillow.com listed prices, they changed by the fact they were being viewed. I’m not concerned about a small change of a few thousand dollars. I noticed in the “history graph”’s that there were changes of 10’s of thousands of dollars in the period immediately following zillow.com’s launch. That concerned me. And it still does.

As I said, I think it is great that you are partnering with zillow.com. I think that in the internet’s “everything-happens-fast” world, you have to partner quick and move quicker. I just hope that you view the data and service provided by zillow.com as not-quite-stable and still in its early stages. It has much room for improvement and will get better as more of us early adopters refer other people to it.

But for now, I advise a bit of caution.