Virtual Housing Stock Market - Zillow API Idea #1
By: Drew Meyers, Business Development Specialist | March 27, 2007
As you may know, we have an Open API. This means that anyone is free to develop anything as long as they adhere to our Branding Requirements and Terms of Use. Many of us here at Zillow have kicked around the idea of a game using Zestimate data for quite some time, but with limited developer resources, it’s unfortunately not at the top of our priority list. However, that’s why the Open API is so cool — freelance developers and established companies alike can build the applications we can only brainstorm on paper.
My personal favorite idea that I would love to see someone build is a virtual housing stock market game. The gist would be that users buy and sell homes, track their gains, and receive points based on how well they do. I’m not sure if anyone is familiar with the old Wall Street Sports game (merged with CBS Sportsline in 1998) — being a sports junkie growing up, I can say it was AWESOME. I could buy shares of all my favorite players, like Ken Griffey Jr, Barry Sanders, Michael Jordan and Penny Hardaway, just as Wall Street investors could buy shares of IBM, Apple, or Microsoft. I could also see how my portfolio was doing relative to others’ on the leaderboard. It’s been a good decade, so I really can’t remember all the features that were incorporated into the game — though I do remember it was extremely addictive.
Obviously, if you’re interested in creating something like this, the features you decide to build would be up to you. I’m no developer — but if I were, here are some of the features I would build:
- Give everyone a pre-set amount of "play" dollars in order to build up a portfolio of properties.
- A fairly detailed leaderboard, perhaps with the ability to be broken down by geography.
- Enable groups of people to compete against others.
- Use the Zestimate value as a buy price for properties that have not been bought before.
- Create a marketplace for users to buy/sell homes based on market demand.
There is already a Hollywood Stock Exchange that uses this same concept, but with shares of Hollywood stars. It seems logical to extend the concept to real estate — where investors buy and sell property in real life already. Other than Weblo (which requires real money to play), I’m not yet aware of a "virtual" real estate market where real estate enthusiasts can spend their free time.
Interested or have other fun ideas? Sign up for our API here.
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Comments
12 Comments so far
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Spencer on March 27, 2007 10:07 am
I love this idea, and hope that it gets shipped sometime. I can’t wait to start playing. And my dad (who is a hard core Monopoly player, and real estate investor) is anxious for it too.
These are the days that I wish I had majored in CS — sometimes I wish that I could write code myself…
Chuck on March 27, 2007 12:11 pm
My team is in the process of developing this concept - we call it Fantasy Real Estate(tm). Watch for our launch in the coming months. We’ll be launching our blog and pre-registration shortly at http://www.realius.com.
Drew M from Zillow on March 27, 2007 2:07 pm
Chuck-
That’s awesome! Let me know if I can be of some assistance.
ca dave on March 27, 2007 3:36 pm
I have an idea for a gadget but after looking at the API closely, I don’t think that it’s possible… I wanted to pick a geography (perhaps a zip code) and for the entire area look at all houses currently for sale, and how the current price compares to the previous sale price on record. (Kind of like the Shiller analysis for “like pairs” of the same house sold twice). As prices are coming down in some parts of the country, you could quickly see a list of “before” and “after” prices for some sample dataset. Unfortunately, the APIs seem to only accommodate pulling information on individual properties…
Ken @ Realivent on March 27, 2007 11:59 pm
Great ideas Drew! We love real estate and we love games. Realivent’s Fantasy Real Estate (TM) game will be coming at http://www.realestatefantasy.com. The daily play by play will be at http://www.fantasyrealestateblog.com. And yes we agree - leaderboards, points, this will be fun…
Kevin Boer on March 28, 2007 10:18 pm
This is a game I’d absolutely play! Bring it on…
Drew M from Zillow on March 29, 2007 8:12 am
Kevin-
I’m in too. Once one of these is built, we’ll have to start some friendly blogger competitions :).
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CJ on April 2, 2007 7:08 am
Go to housemath.us, and let your computer make housing cost calculations for you.
Cory Dorrough on November 1, 2007 8:53 pm
That’s a great idea. I wonder how hard it would be to pull that off. Zillow.com would be smart to just make the game themselves, for publicity.
I wonder what would be a good amount to start with. If you start everyone with $10,000,000 the game would be interesting, but it would be more interesting if users have to start with a single $50,000 property in Wyoming and keep trading and selling their way up to some $700,000 SF Bay Area subdivision homes.
-Cory
WallStSpin.com
Sensex on April 10, 2008 11:37 am
great game good idea
sensex on April 15, 2008 3:17 am
waiting to play the game..bring it on Drew…