Get Zestimates from Your Desktop
By: Jessan Hutchison-Quillian, Intern | October 12, 2006
After the recent announcement of our partnership with Yahoo! Real Estate in which we provide Yahoo! with Zestimates, comparable homes and Zindex data, we Zillow Lab rats began tossing around ideas about how to further showcase information on home values to Yahoo! users. We landed on the idea of a Yahoo! Widget. What’s a widget? It’s a mini-application that runs on your desktop. (Try to download a few — they’re addicting.)
OK, back to our little creation. Once you install Yahoo!’s Widget Engine and then download our “Desktop Zestimate” widget, you can get instant Zestimates and view changes in the value of homes from your desktop. You can also make a specific home your default and have its Zestimate loaded into the widget each time you start your computer. And get this: You can even set it so you get an audio version of the Zestimate. An audio Zestimate… how cool is that? We now have Zestimates for two senses: seeing and hearing!
If you’re a home owner, Desktop Zestimates are a fun way to keep track of the value of your home or any other homes you’re interested in. You can even use it to find out the Zestimate for your favorite Famous Homes.
Read the step-by-step instructions on how to get this widget loaded onto your PC or Mac.
Have fun!
P.S. The name “Brian” on the widget page is Brian Ma, the Project Manager for the widget. I’m not quite sure how he gets all the glory and I do all the work. But, oh well…
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zestimate, Zillow, Zillow API
Comments
8 Comments so far
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maux on November 3, 2006 12:59 pm
Nothing is ‘addicting’. However, many things are addictive.
Adam Solomon on November 13, 2006 1:43 pm
Hi, is there anyway to get this to work in a web site like a Google Gadget?
Drew M from Zillow.com on November 13, 2006 1:50 pm
Adam-
You are in luck!! Please see this blog post for details- http://www.zillowblog.com/zillow_blog/2006/09/google_gadget.html
Adam Solomon on November 13, 2006 2:03 pm
Drew,
Thanks for the info. This only gives overall neighborhood stats, you can’t look up a specific property like you can with the Yahoo widget. Is there anyway to do that?
Drew M on November 13, 2006 2:48 pm
Adam-
I apologize, but the Google Gadget does not provide that functionality. I agree that it would be useful widget for many people- perhaps one of the developers coding with our API will create something like this. Let me know if there is anything else I can answer for you.
Adam Solomon on November 13, 2006 2:52 pm
Drew,
Thanks again. If there are any resources you know of that provide integration examples in either Cold Fusion, ASP, or .Net it would be appreciated. Perhaps then I could use that info to create the Google gadget in questions.
Adam
Drew M on November 13, 2006 3:01 pm
Adam-
There are some API examples listed in our API forum, which can be accessed at http://www.zillowapi.com.
tim on August 11, 2008 2:40 pm
Just wondering why there’s no RSS feeds for Zestimates? these widgets are annoying.