Jun
11
Most Popular “Average-Sized” Homes on Zillow’s Dueling Digs
June 11, 2008 | 1 Comment
I recently wrote a post about the average-sized U.S. home from our Q1 Home Value Reports. As I noted in that post, the “average” U.S. home is 1,500 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. With these dimensions in mind, I dove into Dueling Digs to look at average-sized homes, sorting through homes for [...]
Jun
4
Upside Down Auction… Not For the Faint of Heart
June 4, 2008 | 3 Comments
Tough times call for drastic measures. A friend of mine in Bothell, WA is trying something new to build interest in his house. He is having an auction… sort of. The “Bothell Countdown” is the brainchild of Justin Wilcox and is something like a reverse auction where instead of the price [...]
May
22
In case you missed it…
May 22, 2008 | 3 Comments
In case you missed this morning’s first Webinar for Real Estate Professionals, you can access the archived presentation through Zillow’s Media Room. Thanks to all of you who attended. We had a fantastic turnout, some great questions, and Stan and I had a lot of fun.
Speaking of questions, our only regret is that we did [...]
May
12
Dr. Stan Humphries, VP Data & Analytics, and the man behind our housing data, will be giving a speech to the Real Estate Roundtable at the Rainier Club in downtown Seattle on Monday May 19. He will be discussing Seattle home prices and US housing data in great detail over lunch.
I am a member of [...]
Mar
18
There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago by David Wessel discussing differences between the housing index produced by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) and Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index. Since Zillow recently released our Q4 2007 Home Value Reports, I thought I’d extend Mr. [...]
Feb
7
Home Values: When Perception and Reality Don’t Meet
February 7, 2008 | 8 Comments
It’s hard to turn anywhere these days without hearing about the housing market slowdown, sales slumps or mortgage and credit woes. But who is really affected by all these reports? Not me. Well, I don’t think it’s me. Maybe it’s everyone around me, but certainly not me. This, at least, seems to be the sentiment [...]
Jan
15
What’s in a Number?
January 15, 2008 | 16 Comments
In the case the Zestimate, it’s a lot. Lloyd’s blog post Thursday announced that we officially came out of beta in concert with expanding our database and improving our accuracy. I wanted to offer a little more perspective on what goes into your Zestimate now.
When we first launched in 2006, we set out to do [...]
Jan
15
Explaining Changes to Zestimate History
January 15, 2008 | 17 Comments
Last week’s launch of our new Zestimate algorithm involved the most significant update to Zestimate values since Zillow launched in beta in early 2006. We also updated more than 10 years of historical Zestimate values. The changes made to the Zestimate history have raised quite a few questions so I thought it could be [...]
Jan
10
Bye Bye Beta
January 10, 2008 | 12 Comments
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 [...]
Jan
2
Do Democrats make better neighbors?
January 2, 2008 | 2 Comments
We’re all about surveys lately—and are finding the results pretty interesting! Our most recent survey with Harris Interactive came in just in time for tomorrow’s first caucus of the 2008 election. We asked folks which presidential candidate would they most like to live next door to, and it turns out democrats may make better [...]

