Archive for April, 2008

I don’t know what I’m anticipating more: my rebate check or a letter from my lender that tells me my HELOC is on ice. Back in January, lenders started notifying borrowers that their Home Equity Line of Credit — which is essentially a debit card on steroids — was being frozen, or rendered useless. Countrywide [...]

Today’s Wiki Wednesday Feature: Owning vs. Renting a Home

The mortgage crisis has sent the real estate industry into a tailspin with lots of potential buyers standing in the wings, waiting for the bottom to appear. In the meantime, we all need to live somewhere. What’s the option if not buying a home? Obviously, renting. Today’s Wiki Wednesday [...]

Who knew bathrooms could be so luxurious? After looking at this lineup of bathrooms, it’s like having your very own spa. Add an in-home masseuse and the good life just got much better. Here’s our lineup of Zillow’s Top Ten Most Popular Bathrooms on Dueling Digs. Be sure to click through to the [...]

Today is Earth Day, so let’s turn our attention to what we can do on a micro level to help save our planet so our kids’ kids’ kids (follow that one?) will have a chance to breathe clean air and eat foods that haven’t been contaminated by pesticides or whatnot. Plastic is the new SUV [...]

It’s official! Zillow has won a Webware award in the Commerce & Events category of the competition. We’re tickled to be a winner in this category next to some big hitters such as Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, Kayak, Etsy, Google AdWords, Woot, PayPal, and Yahoo Shopping. You may remember that we blogged [...]

Steve Jagger of Reachd put together the 87th edition of the Carnival of Real Estate, selecting eight top picks in no particular order. Plus, Steve threw in a bonus video post, which features an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts,  the head of Google’s Web spam team.
The carnival will make its next appearance on Monday, [...]

Last Thursday was a busy day in the world of online training for real estate professionals.
I was down at the 4RealzEd internet marketing seminar in Orange County put on by Dustin Luther and Jim Marks (Zillow was one of the sponsors). Jim mentioned a couple interesting stats worth repeating; 80% of buyers start their search [...]

Stumbled upon this great photo of Seattle’s downtown on the Seattle City page while looking for something else (now I know why that Web browser plug-in name is so apt). The photo is by seattlerealtorgal as she rode shotgun on a motorcycle. I only wish we’d have more days like this around here! And [...]

For those of you who haven’t already heard the news, today Freddie Mac reached an agreement with Wells Fargo, Citibank, Washington Mutual and JPMorgan Chase to purchase mortgages up to $730,000 in some areas. What does this mean for you?
Traditionally, homes loans above $417,000 were considered jumbo, and were not backed by government-sponsored programs, including [...]

You spend approximately a third of your life in bed, which to me, is a little crazy when I think about it. Think of all the things you could be doing! It does, however, make a great argument for why you should spend the extra time and money making your bedroom as nice [...]