We’re flattered, but a little wobbly…

33 Comments so far

1. Anonymous on February 8, 2006 8:45 am

   I just logged on to this site and experienced some timeouts. But these are growing pains and are expected on the first day of launch.

   I cannot tell you how happy I am to see competitors in this market standing up to some nameless and shameful entities hugging this space on Internet. I hope that NAR will wake up and smell the coffee and drop their support of that other real estate online company and give their support to a company that most deserve it. And I truly hope that would be you guys. The site ROCKS.

   narbeh

2. Web Things Considered on February 8, 2006 8:47 am

   Zillow.com launch

   Wow, I bet heads are rolling somewhere in Seattle today. Zillow.com launched today (more here), complete with $32 million and 75 employees, and what do we get for that? A nice big outage message. Ill say it again, wow! $32 million and you c…

3. Jeremy Brandt on February 8, 2006 8:51 am

   Zillow Part 2

   Looks like Zillow may be having a few issues, turns out a lot of people were waiting to see what they would launch and they served up over 300,000 pages between midnight 7am. How do you think this will effect

4. JB on February 8, 2006 8:53 am

   Obviously you were hit by a bit more traffic then you expected, what were you planning for? I’m sure as 8am rolled around you started getting slammed if you served up 300,000 views overnight!

5. Anonymous on February 8, 2006 9:22 am

   What part of “beta” do you not understand? Sheesh, how ‘bout a little patience folks?

6. Dee on February 8, 2006 9:46 am

   Ouch.

7. Heywood on February 8, 2006 9:49 am

   Bummer. Seems like a cool site. Too bad I haven’t been able to access it for the last two hours.

8. Stranger on February 8, 2006 11:11 am

   Sure another one of the marketing gimmicks

9. Vicky Cassens Zillioux on February 8, 2006 11:18 am

   Hey guys - Welcome to the world of automated valuations…Is there an email I can use to get in touch with someone at the company directly? (although I am sure that everyone is quite busy right now…

10. Mike Nguyen on February 8, 2006 12:17 pm

    Zillow ROCKS…says my house went up $1200 since last week. I wonder what next week will bring…$2000?

    This is MIKE “the Tester from Seattle”!

11. Anonymous on February 8, 2006 12:29 pm

    how is zillow different from electronicappraiser.com?

12. Mike Nguyen on February 8, 2006 12:33 pm

    electronicappraiser.com is crap! Can you say FREE vs. Pay! Can you say real time data vs. delay! Get the heck outta here, not even in the same league!

13. Matt VB on February 8, 2006 12:58 pm

    I would have expected a better launch considering the hype (errr…or lack there of?).

14. Matt VB on February 8, 2006 1:02 pm

    We’ll see how long this lasts…here’s the back door into the site:
    http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.z?mode=browse

15. Anonymous on February 8, 2006 1:20 pm

    Mike,

    Why do you say real time vs. delay?

    Isn’t the data taken from the same public data source?

    Or does Zillow have someone sitting in all 3,300 county clerk offices?

16. Cord on February 8, 2006 1:34 pm

    A site outage on the day of your launch is unacceptable! You obviously were not prepared to deal with the hand your marketing folks dealt you. While your execs are experienced folks, Zillow looks like a bunch of amateurs today. Can you imagine Realtor.com having an outage? Of course not, and you propose to take them on??? Come on, whose kidding whom now?

    Get your act together!

17. Jason on February 8, 2006 1:39 pm

    Great site! Growing pains are to be expected. Looking forward to helping you guys get things worked out.

18. Jamie on February 8, 2006 1:55 pm

    Considering all the press coverage that this launch got, I’m impressed that they go the site up and running at all on day one.

    It looks like it’ll be a great tool, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves! Congrats the the Zillow team on a great idea.

19. mrhouse on February 8, 2006 1:57 pm

    Cool Site for navigating the neighborhood. The Zestimator to adjust value is not accurate at all. It obviosly is using % increase across the board. For example, if a house is worth $950k, and has 3 bathrooms, and you adjust it to have 2 bathrooms, the new value is $750k

    Um,a bathroom is worth 100k? I don’t think so. Maybe adding a full bathroom to a $300k house increases it 15%, $45k, but 15% , on a $950K house, $142k is not accurate. They should be using a sliding scale percentage determined by base value.

    Another example, I make it have 6 bathrooms, its value goes up to 1.5 million. Obviosuly, this is not to scale

20. Mike Nguyen on February 8, 2006 2:14 pm

    Matt VB,

    When I was talking about RealTime vs. Delay, I was talking about presenting the data to the end user. I can see the results of my search vs. having to wait for an email from someone or some realtor (ie HouseValue.com) that emails you back and keep on emailing you about when you going to buy or sell. The whole point is if I’m curious and want the results right away (maybe I will sell or maybe not).

21. Alan in New Jersey on February 8, 2006 2:34 pm

    This is a killer ap. I am sure you will get the bugs smoothed out.

    When is your IPO, and how do I get some?

22. Seattle's Rain City Real Estate Guide on February 8, 2006 6:16 pm

    Zillows Impact On Day 1

    Despite the fact that the Zillow site spent most of the day gasping and sighing, a ton of digital ink was spilled discussing their service (or lack thereof). Here are the articles I found most interesting from Day 1:

    Web Site Offers One-Stop Real Es…

23. Jane Kusterer on February 8, 2006 8:55 pm

    Well, it certainly is a fun and entertaining site with lots of good information, but unfortunately, your market “Zvaluations” from my first hand real estate sales experience in Charlotte, NC are way off the mark in about 90% of the homes I researched in whose sales and or listings I was personally involved. One home in particular which has been on the market for over a year for $552,000 was valued on your site for $657000…What a joke!! It would be realy scarey for people to try to sell their homes “For Sale By Owner” using your data….Sure makes the case for qualified and experienced Realtors like myself to be involved as Buyers agents!

24. Christian on February 9, 2006 8:04 am

    The web valuations are completely incorrect for every property I have researched. They bear no connection to recent solds and properties currently on the market. They do not take into account the influence of neighborhood and condition of the home. A nice gimmick to get eyeballs, but should certainly not be relied on when trying to price a house for sale or purchase.

25. Josh in SoCAL... on February 9, 2006 8:50 am

    There are a lot of harsh comments out there for the release of the Beta site. So what if your property is off, that what happens when you live do not live in the major metropolitan areas. They probably do not have nearly the listing as they would in Seattle, LA, or San Francisco. I think this thing will be more of a fun tool than an actually way to do business. I think this will help in home valuation, but no one should trust their largest investment to an internet website valuation.

26. Anonymous on February 9, 2006 10:11 am

    Who’s brilliant idea was to put violet printing on jet-black background?

    Don’t you want visitors to read the words and navigate the site?

    Sorry for your troubles.

    Now go fix.

27. Fred on February 10, 2006 9:08 pm

    Unbeleivable

    great job, about time

    you will transform this industry

    the old way of doing business will get hammered just like auto did 10 years ago

    now consumers will have this information at their fingertips and not have to depend on MLS RE sales people. Something will have to give. lets see…seller broker, seller agent, buyer broker, buyer agent

    you think maybe someone will get shoved out of the way

    you will change this industry

    Im guesssing as a new agent, it might pay to get a dynamo lap top with full internet/wireless capability because speed and being web savy on the fly while on the road doing real time analysis with wow factor will work

    again, congrats

28. steve on February 13, 2006 12:46 pm

    285 east first street braidwood illinois 60408 doesnt come up buy itself 295 east first shows twice. My home 285 is at least 300 sq feet bigger than 295 east first so what you have at 170,000 should be mine you may want to fix that. i also see some of the homes arnt even on there ? some of these homes are older than mine is this normal?

29. Anonymous on February 25, 2006 3:49 pm

    Please explain your values for “Construction Quality” under Home Facts.

30. Diane Tuman on February 27, 2006 12:20 pm

    Construction quality is a value provided by the assessor’s office in local jurisdictions. Assessors give homes a rating from 1-10, with 1 being poorest quality and 10 the best. It is their assessment of how well the building was built. Also, homes are rated relative to each other within a county; therefore, one county’s value might not correlate to another county.

31. John Ovall on June 26, 2006 10:05 pm

    Whatis gage for “Construction Quality” Is it 1 to 10? Is ten the best? Is 6 a House built with good construction?

32. Betty Smythe on January 12, 2007 3:18 pm

    I filled out form for housevalue.com and I gave sq.ft. 1635 which it what my home is and it ask for “2” not “2”.”5”. I don’t know how to list sq.ft. anyother way than what it is 1635 sq.ft. Can you help me with what they want.???

    Thanks,

33. Drew M from Zillow on January 12, 2007 3:37 pm

    Betty-
    I’m a little unclear of what the issue is. Are you trying to update your home facts on Zillow? If so, you shouldn’t have to update the square footage if the sq footage that Zillow lists is correct. This page might help clarify this issue: http://www.zillow.com/howto/EditingHomeFacts.htm

    Please leave another comment with further details if you are still having trouble. Thanks.