We’ve come a long way, baby
By: Zillow Team, Zillow.com | August 8, 2006
Six months ago today, Zillow launched the beta site with great… uhh… fanfare… and some interest that frankly overwhelmed us.
Once we got stable, we began to be amazed at the insatiable consumer appetite for data and valuation information on homes. And with data in mind, we went rummaging for stats on how far we’ve come in the past half-year. Here’s Zillow at six months by the numbers:
Home data
- Since Zillow’s launch, 22.8 million different homes have been searched, or just over a third of our database.
- However people are clearly a little more Zillow-crazy in some areas than others. In Hillsborough, CA and Atherton, CA, both areas south of San Francisco, nearly 95% of area homes in Zillow’s database have been searched! Other Zillow-saturated areas: San Marino, CA: 94.8%, Weston, MA: 92.2%, Palos Verdes Estates, CA and Wellesley, MA: 91.9%. Kind of an East Coast-West Coast thing.
- Meanwhile our database of homes has increased from about 62 million at launch to today’s total of 67,370,565. Up about 600,000 since our last update in June.
- And our coverage of homes with Bird’s Eye Views has increased as well since the launch of this feature in April. New areas of coverage for these aerial photographs of homes include most of Denver and Boulder, CO; Fort Worth, TX and Trenton, NJ.
Guilty pleasures
- We were pleased to learn that our intended audience of homeowners, buyers and sellers is indeed coming to the site. But we also realized that people like to have a little fun, so a few months ago we created a page of famous TV homes.
- Which of these homes is most popular? Hugh Hefner’s house — with nearly 189,000 page views to date. This is followed by the Beverly Hillbillies mansion, with 159,000 page views, and the loveable stuck-in-the-70’s Brady Bunch home, with 130,000 page views.
Zestimates on the go
- More recently, we introduced a new Zillow Labs project called ZMobile, where you can get a Zestimate on the go from your mobile phone or blackberry. Since first adding info on this to our site a few weeks ago, we’ve averaged about 170 mobile inquires a day.
Frankly, we can’t believe it’s only been six months. But like any new business, we’ve still got work to do — data to add, Zestimates to improve and new products and features to launch. We’ve also got about 25 new openings to fill. Stay with us — it’s going to be an exciting first year.
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zestimate, Zillow
Comments
7 Comments so far
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Nick Pang on August 8, 2006 2:40 pm
congratulations on your success!
i hope zillow will revolutionize the real estate industry like eLoan did to residential loans.
many exciting opportunities ahead with home values in real-time at your fingertips
finance girl on August 9, 2006 1:16 pm
Zillow rocks! Fantastic work at revolutionizing how consumers interact with real estate (for the better!)You give the consumer “non-realtor” estimates on a house for buy or sell, and that has not been easy to get pre-Zillow. Zillow would have helped me immensely in my previous purchases. And, since it’s such a crucial piece of anyone’s asset portfolio, real estate sell/buy decisions impact the consumer for decades into their future. Thanks for bringing Zillow to fruition!!
Scott on August 25, 2006 2:43 pm
ok…..its been almost 1 full year now and neither my home nor my neighbors’ appears on ur site. They were both new construction. We are in california where apparently u do ur best in updating….im just amazed it takes over a year for new homes in a big market to be added to ur system…..wow
I’ve called the county and they have record of the homes…..why not u???
scott
David G from Zillow.com on August 25, 2006 3:11 pm
Hi Scott,
Thanks for checking back with us and my apologies that we don’t have your house yet.
We rely on our data providers to aggregate the county’s records — sometimes that means waiting until the annual tax roll is released before we’re informed of a new properties. We receive sales records more frequently than tax appraisals, i.e. if you sold your house it would probably show up on Zillow faster.
If you want to e-mail me [davidg@…] with your address, I’ll have our data team look into whether there isn’t anything else at play here but since the problem impacts your neighbor too, my gut tells me it’s because of the annual tax roll issue I mentioned.
Scott on September 25, 2006 10:59 am
ok…..maybe my 3rd try will be the lucky one.
David, twice i posted here, twice u asked me to email u direct.
Twice i emailed u direct and twice u never responded back to me.
680 orange and 629 orange(92386)were built a year ago and neither shows up on ur site. san bernardino county has the records…i called them.
My big question is…..why do u ask me to email u direct if u won’t respond??? I understand it takes time to acquire info…but if it takes u a year to update every home, ur site cannot be as accurate as u say!
logic says ur site is a year behind….am i wrong?
scott
scott on September 25, 2006 11:04 am
David….by the way…
i have already received and paid my tax bill as well as my supplemental(as has my neighbor).
i called san bernardino county and they said the info is there….they have the info, but zillow doesn’t???
just confused…..it seems ur site is a year behind.
scott
David G from Zillow.com on September 25, 2006 11:26 am
SCOTT -
I’m so sorry that I haven’t sent you feedback. We researched your address and your neighbor’s and confirmed that we have never received either record and that both properties are absent from the data feeds our data providers send us. I should have let you know that.
This has us stumped - on average, the sales records we receive are just a few weeks old. We unfortunately don’t manage the physical process by which this information is collected from the county - but do review the completeness and accuracy of the data we receive with our vendors who aggregate it for us.
Just FYI - we are working on alternate solutions to the problem of missing houses. Thanks for your patience and for checking back in with us while we do.