« Beer For Bloggers Event In New York City | Home | We’re listening »

Jan

10

Bye Bye Beta

By: Lloyd Frink, President | January 10, 2008 |

Today Zillow is thrilled to announce a significant upgrade to our site, which increases the number of homes with Zestimate valuations to 67 million homes in the U.S., a 68 percent increase from when we launched in beta in 2006. In addition, the total number of homes with information on Zillow rises from 70 to 80 million, or about 90% of all homes in the country. Some of our newest areas with Zestimates include the states of Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky and Louisiana among others.

Not only are our Zestimates more widespread, but they’re also now more accurate… 12% better across the board, in fact. How did we do this? We made our Zestimate models hyper-local, adding over 20x more models nationwide and we built smarter logic to decide which models to use on which house. So whether you’re looking for a home in Birmingham or the Hollywood Hills, your home’s Zestimate is now calculated based the combination of models that works best for your area and home type. The new algorithm also takes into account owner- and agent-edited facts that have been made by our community of users. As you can imagine, when public records have inaccurate information – such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage – this can impact the value accuracy of that home. Now owners and agents – who have the most intimate knowledge of homes – can actively contribute to our database and Zestimate accuracy.

It feels like just yesterdaywe first launched Zillow with data on 60 million homes and Zestimates on 40 million. We’ve come a long way since then, opening up the site to community input, expanding our advertising business and partnering with brokerages, industry professionals and hundreds of newspapers. (In fact, just yesterday we added two more great partners to our Listings Feeds program).

We’ve learned a great deal along the way and will continue to do so, but the time is right to come out of beta. But this doesn’t mean we’re done by any means…you can expect us to continue to find innovative ways of serving the consumer and helping real estate professionals market themselves.

Keep an eye out for more exciting releases and products later this year that take Zillow into new areas. In the meantime, take our new algorithm for test drive on your home – or the homes of your friends and family, if you like. If you want to see how your region stacks up for accuracy, visit our data and accuracy pages that break down our accuracy by market down to the county level. You’ll quickly see in some places we’re great and in others we can still get better, which we are always working toward. What you’ll also see is a great deal of transparency - that is our fundamental commitment to you. And, for those who have a bit more interest in the math and science behind our improvement, watch for an upcoming post by Stan.

Stumble it!

Topics: Real Estate, Zestimate, Zillow |

Enjoy this post? Subscribe to the Zillow Blog feed or get updates via e-mail

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


Comments

12 Comments so far

  1. Zillow.com cultivates its garden with ten million new database records, improved home valuation algorithms and the adoption, with Trulia.com and other Realty.bots, of the RETS listings standard | BloodhoundBlog: Real estate marketing and technology blog | on January 10, 2008 8:26 am

    [...] notice: John Cook, TechCrunch, Jay Thompson, Jim Duncan, Kris Berg, Lloyd Frink, Tom Royce, Mike Price, Peter [...]

  2. arjun on January 10, 2008 2:44 pm

    woohoo! congrats on the launch!

  3. Thomas Johnson on January 10, 2008 4:31 pm

    Bye Bye beta and hello Zestifarming! Gotta plant my crop-otherwise known as peeing on the tree….

  4. 45 Things I Learned at RE Connect « 4realz.net on January 13, 2008 6:00 pm

    [...] of “make-news”. I’d be worried for their business if they weren’t making the improvements they announced (adding more listings, improving the quality of Zestimates, dropping beta, etc.). Joel [...]

  5. Trey McClure on January 14, 2008 1:11 pm

    You don’t make a huge change to your software and immediately remove the “Beta” tag. You screwed up! Your estimates are way off as mentioned on your discussion boards and you now have lost credibility because of it. Unfortunate, as I was a true believer.

  6. Trevor on January 14, 2008 8:25 pm

    Hey Lloyd,

    Great news! I didn’t know about these updates before I wrote a recent blog post mentioning Zillow. David there at Zillow shot me over an email today to let me know of the changes…

    … so I’ll be doing an in-depth analysis of Zillow versus a couple other property evaluator sites that my readers let us know about.

    Anyhow, keep up the good work and keep improving the product.

    Cheers,

    Trevor M.
    The REI Brain
    http://www.theREIbrain.com/realestate-blog

  7. Explaining Changes to Zestimate History - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 15, 2008 3:48 pm

    [...] Trevor: Hey Lloyd, Great news! I didn’t know about these updates… [...]

  8. What’s in a Number? - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 15, 2008 3:55 pm

    [...] Trevor: Hey Lloyd, Great news! I didn’t know about these updates… [...]

  9. 7000+ Neighborhood Boundary Files in Shapefile Format - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 17, 2008 3:48 pm

    [...] Bye Bye Beta [...]

  10. Lyn Liming on January 24, 2008 4:44 pm

    You algorithm for you home value estimate appears to relay heavily on tax valuations as reported AFTER any exemptions and adjustments. In the case of our home at 77 Lake Hinsdale Dr, Unit 112, Willowbrook, IL 60527 it shows an estimate of $124,000. Unit 212 which is right above it and is IDENTICAL has an estimate of $284,500. I don’t know what adjustments they have but we have a $70,000 Veterans exemption on our tax valuation. To add to the problem, the taxes on some residences are capped because of “Senior Freezes”. I don’t know what the answer is but it certainly is not to relay on tax valuations.

    Lyn

  11. 2008 » January - Zillow® Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis on January 24, 2008 6:57 pm

    [...] Lyn Liming: You algorithm for you home value estimate appears to relay h… [...]

  12. Anonymous on February 24, 2008 1:49 pm

    oh, i think so, when ll be similar post?

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind