Fantasy House Shopping on Zillow
By: Spencer Rascoff, COO | March 1, 2006
There are lots of cool things you can do on Zillow.com. Of course if you’re in the market for a house, using Zillow as a research tool to help determine what you should pay is a no-brainer. Likewise, if you’re selling your house, you should use Zillow to help determine your asking price, and you should probably also use the My Zestimator tool to revise your Zestimate. Maybe even have printouts of the My Zestimator summary page at your open house.
But besides these very practical, utilitarian uses for Zillow, there are some fun and frivolous elements too. One of my favorite uses of Zillow’s "data porn" is to fantasy shop for houses in exotic locations. Cruise around waterfront property in Miami (photo, right) and virtually rub elbows with J-Lo and Shaq. Or, on a damp, dreary winter Seattle day check out houses in La Jolla (photo, left), just blocks from world-famous Torrey Pines golf course. A little closer to us, Medina is fun for a fantasy fly-over also.
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Zillow
Comments
8 Comments so far
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Mike on March 3, 2006 11:07 am
Hi,
Great site! Just curious…How often do you update the data? THe values for my house and my neihbor’s were calculated on 1/28/2005. BTW - My house is in zip code 20148 (Loudoun County, VA)
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Mike
John on March 4, 2006 11:07 am
How does Zillow determine a price in the neighborhood ? from Public records ? and how far does it search to determine those prices ?
(1/2 mile radius?, whole city search?)
http://www.Bay-Area-Cash.com
http://www.Stateof-California.com
Brian Nadig on March 5, 2006 5:56 am
I justed checked your listing for my house and others in my neigborhood. All are inaccurate in details of the property and assessed valuations. Suggest you do better homework before posting mis-leading information. I’m not impressed so far.
Vum on March 5, 2006 3:12 pm
How do you come up with the value of the house? The different of my house and the next door is 300K ???. The site should be a fun place to look around. I hope it give update and search features.
Thanks.
Anonymous on March 13, 2006 9:10 am
We checked two addresses located in different parts of town and found that your guesstimates were inflated by at least $100,000. Tucson, AZ
Scott Worthington on March 14, 2006 4:25 pm
Just wanted to let you know, as fun as your site is to look around, I am having alot of trouble figuring out where you get your value. A few of my co-workers and I actually had a few loans die out because the value was so far off. We all started using Zillow.com at about the same time when we found out about it, and it has made our process of grounding value horrible. It is a good site with alot of info but we are all scared to use it now. Our sales manager has actually banned us from using this site.
Sonia on March 25, 2006 12:06 pm
As a real estate professional in the State of Michigan, and just taking a look at what you have my home valued at, you are a touch too HIGH, I would hate to see some sellers use your site to market their property, especially since our property values are quite down right now.
John on June 2, 2006 11:05 pm
Why are you still teasing the people? Zillow is and always will be a joke. Take it down.