New Today on Zillow: Home Q&A and More

59 Comments so far

1. BloodhoundBlog on April 3, 2007 11:38 pm

   Planet Zillow.com: Burgeoning Realty.bot grows, potentially, to become a self-sustaining residential real estate eco-system

   Heres the news. Well circle back for details and implications.
   Zillow.com, the national Realty.bot growing out of the popular automated home valuation service, is releasing a new version of its popular web-based real estate portal tonight…

2. Jillayne Schlicke on April 3, 2007 11:55 pm

   I’m not an agent, but it looks like I can play in this sandbox. Let me check out how easy/hard this is.

   Okay, I’ll play! I put up a profile, what’s next?

   Do I submit questions, answer questions, or both?

   Thanks, guys.

3. CJ,Broker in L A CA on April 4, 2007 4:38 am

   Here’s a question. We are agents. We post all of our listings on Zillow. When someone enters a question, will we get an automatic email to tell us there’s a question … or do we have to check each posted listing periodically throughout the end. (That could turn into a PITA :0 )

4. CJ,Broker in L A CA on April 4, 2007 4:40 am

   oops. That should read “throughout the DAY …..

5. CJ,Broker in L A CA on April 4, 2007 6:47 am

   Sorry to go comment crazy. Now that I have actually read the FAQ… you state that the homeowner will receive email notice of questions posted. What about the listing agent?

6. Anthony C on April 4, 2007 6:52 am

   I Really like the free profile and the fact that we can post our listings for free with photos. The Q&A feature should be very interesting as well.

7. David G from Zillow.com on April 4, 2007 7:50 am

   CJ —

   Good question. As the listing agent, if you posted the listing on Zillow, you will receive an e-mail notification each time someone contributes to Q&A on the home. If your seller has claimed their home, they will also receive an e-mail.

8. Beth on April 5, 2007 8:17 am

   Hello, as a RE agent I’m enjoying your site so far and I have a question - it’s showing me that a particular property sold on 3/15/07 but my MLS is not indicating that it has sold and that it was withdrawn - where is the data gathered on a sold property? From public records or is it self-entered by the seller/buyer? Thanks for your time!

9. David G from Zillow.com on April 5, 2007 10:12 am

   BETH -

   Sold data comes from public records via our data vendors who aggregate it across the country.

10. Joe Beitey on April 5, 2007 3:14 pm

    I think the Q & A concept of having a community comment on a particular home and/or neighborhood is great. However, how are you going to police-up the info discussed to maintain meaninfulness and relevancy, and avoid mis-information/abuse?

11. David G from Zillow.com on April 5, 2007 4:32 pm

    JOE -

    Thanks for the feedback and yes, we are holding contributors to the standards that are described in our Good Neighbor Policy (http://www.zillow.com/howto/GoodNeighborPolicy.htm)

    If you see any contributions that are offensive, hit the “flag content” link to send it to site moderators for review. If you read a ‘borderline’ answer on a question, you can rate it as being “unhelpful”.

12. jf.sellsius on April 6, 2007 7:03 pm

    If an owner objected to their home being listed for sale by a stranger, what would zillow’s response be?
    Would the answer be the same if the objection came from the listing broker?
    For purposes of this hypothetical, assume neither wanted to “claim” the home.

13. Rich B from Zillow on April 8, 2007 6:18 pm

    JF-
    That would be akin to an owner or an agent asking the public to please stop talking about the fact that a home is for sale and at what price, be it in the coffee shop, while dropping the kids off at baseball practice, or on Zillow. We think spotlighting conversations on Zillow that are already taking place in the real world continues a fantastically positive trend towards transparency in an historically opaque marketplace. So, unless contributions by Zillow community members are incorrect, unproductive, or off topic, we will let their contributions stay.

14. lillian on April 8, 2007 9:17 pm

    I HAVE TRIED TO ACCESS THE http://WWW.ZILLOW.COM FOR ATLEAST A MONTH IN VAIN.
    IS THIS THEIR NEW WEB SITE NAME,

    We’re sorry, there is a problem with the site.

    Lillian

15. jf.sellsius on April 9, 2007 2:04 pm

    Dear Mr. Barton,

    What happens in coffee shops vs. what is published permanently online are 2 different things, I suspect. (The fact that you have a flagging system is an admission that false or misleading statements can be made about someone’s home.)

    Still, if you regard Q&A as the equivalent of coffee shop conversation and I, as a homeowner disagree, will you honor my request to opt-out, i.e not let others list my home for sale & comment on it? Must I be forced to claim my home to do so? —to stop others from listing and posting comments on it, some of which may not be true & which I do not want to be burdened to check on zillow.

    If I as a homeowner do not use the internet or know of zillow, how can I possibly flag a clearly false statement about my home?

    Shouldn’t homeowners have the right to opt-out?

    Consider also the fact that some items only a homeowner can flag and if they are unaware of the listing, you may be putting them at risk.
    Until an item is flagged,it remains as poison in the well.

16. David G from Zillow.com on April 9, 2007 5:49 pm

    JF -

    If you pay attention to Rich’s response, you’ll have the answer to all of your questions; namely, that we view Home Q&A as an online incarnation of the conversation that’s happening off-line in neighborhoods today. WITH that assumption, it’s easy to answer your questions because Zillow mirrors the real world;

    1) Can owners opt out of Home Q&A? Of course not - and if you can tell me how to get my neighbors to stop talking about me or my home off-line, I’d love to hear it.

    2) What about homeowners without internet access? What about the conversation the neighbors had at the market when I wasn’t around? Admittedly, though, I have more chance of finding these conversations online after the fact.

    We’re just moving the conversation to a new venue — but the conversation is the same one we’ve been having since we had to choose which cave we slept in.

17. jf.sellsius on April 9, 2007 8:29 pm

    David,

    I can certainly appreciate your argument that you are merely mirroring what happens offline. But I believe the logic is flawed. It’s apples and avocados, as they say. Verbal conversations are not heard by the millions who visit Zillow. Nor do they resonnate in perpetuity like the written word(unless you believe a coffee shop conversation is repeated over and over so everyone who comes in gets the story.). So there is a huge difference in your coffee shop conversation and a Q&A on zillow about my home.

    And who is motivated to flag false or misleading content? Certainly not a party unconnected to the owner. Only the owner or LA has a reason to flag. And if they are unaware of Z then how can they flag? The simple answer is they can’t.

    And despite all our exchanges, no word on an owner’s right to say “I do not want anyone other than myself or my LA to list on Zillow.” Everywhere else they can choose not to list. Why not on zillow? It is indeed a clever way to get a house listed for sale on zillow by letting others do it, but that does not make it right as we see it from the owners’ eyes.

    The answer to your question (1) is give owners the right to opt out of Q&A listing—only let the owner or LA choose to list the home for sale —not a person who has no ties to the home or alignment of interest with the homeowner. You deny homeowners the right to choose NOT to be part of your community discourse. YOur Q&A is favoring buyers at the expense of sellers/owners.

    Despite your belief that we are anti-zillow—-I can assure you we are not. It is just that our strong belief in homeowners’ rights makes us butt heads with Zillow, who is apparently buyer biased. We should aspire to treat all equally, including the owners, whose asset is the heart and soul or your model. By denying them opt-outs not only on zestimate price tags next to their list price (I saw 3 price tags on a home) but also listing by others, you are saying, in essence, they have no right to object. If I recall correctly, the impetus for Zillow was B&F frustrations as BUYERS.

    Your cave analogy is intersting but I do not recall any cave writings commenting on the flaws of other caves.

18. David G from Zillow.com on April 10, 2007 8:42 am

    Lillian -

    I’m sorry to hear you’re battling to access the site — it is definitely working. If you recently added security software (like a firewall), please disable that and try again. Other tips regarding systems issues can be found here; http://www.zillow.com/howto/faq/SystemIssuesFAQ.htm#problems

    JF -

    We disagree. That’s OK. You should note though that only a listing agent or seller can post a listing on Zillow.

19. jf.sellsius on April 11, 2007 11:26 am

    David,

    Did Zillow change its policy? I thought ANYONE could say (post) that a home is for sale.

    Yes, we do disagree. I am unaware of how a person who does not use the internet can “flag” misleading comments on zillow about their home for sale. Do you know this can be done?

20. jf.sellsius on April 11, 2007 11:37 am

    Re: Comparison of Q&A with offline communications—- offline verbal conversations are not recorded and posted on a website right beside my home which is listed for sale.

    Also, your flagging system is an admission that misleading or false statements can be made about the home on zillow——thus a flagger must exist and sometimes (often) that flagger is the owner—-if that owner does not use the internet or zillow —it is IMPOSSIBLE for him or her to flag and your flag system has failed for this homeowner.

    These are the inherent flaws of allowing anyone to post that a stranger’s home is for sale. That right should remain with the owner and listing agent.

21. David G from Zillow.com on April 11, 2007 11:21 pm

    JF -

    Let me be more specific; only the seller or the listing agent can advertise a listing on Zillow. Until they do, anyone can inform the Zillow community that the home is for sale.

    Please, try it out.

22. Vu on April 16, 2007 1:48 pm

    Hi my name is Vu and I am a student from Santa Clara University in California. Two of my friends and I are doing a Venture Capital competition with Stanford and Cal and we picked Zillow.com for our company. I want to contact Zillow to ask them questions about the firm but I can’t find their contact information. Does anyone know their contact information.
    Thank you!
    Vu Doan
    Vhdoan@scu.edu

23. Drew Meyers from Zillow on April 16, 2007 4:19 pm

    Vu-
    So glad you selected Zillow for your project! Please feel free to contact me via e-mail. It’s drewm at zillow dot com.

24. Jerry Bissell on April 23, 2007 7:42 pm

    How do I find the picture (Microsoft Virtual Earth) of the house at 1457 N. Pasadena Cir. Mesa, AZ 85201?

25. Ginny Jones on April 27, 2007 9:50 am

    I entered my own address to see what value it is and your info says it recently sold for 45000. Wrong! I refinanced (for more) So where did this come from?

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27. Thomas Burgess on May 23, 2007 7:27 am

    My house is posted twice. How do I remove one of them? Thanks

28. AB on May 27, 2007 5:58 pm

    We were looking at Zillow data and our local MLS (in Texas) data and they don’t seem to match at all for “recently sold” information. Where does Zillow get recently sold information from? Can you provide a more detailed answer than “from our vendors”? Do you get sold data from MLS?

29. George Gardner on June 1, 2007 4:19 pm

    I am just beginning a brand new real estate web site. What is the possibility of adding a link to Zillow on that site?

30. Shelia on June 2, 2007 3:54 pm

    How can I get a airel picture taken of my home rather than the one taken at the time the subdivision was about to be built (the cal-du-sac road is in on the picture but that is all) The home and the subdivision has been built.

31. Tom Thomsen on June 11, 2007 8:17 pm

    Hello,

    I looked at the listed value of my house vs. my neighbors houses. My has the sq. footage and year built incorrect. Also I just put in a 100K paver driveway (8032 S.F.) and 30k worth of block wall. This certainly isn’t included in the valuation. Plus my house is not run down like the others (which look good but need some tlc). My question is how do you get your info and if you have a typo, how can it get corrected? My house was built in 1979 not in the 60’s as listed and the S.F. is off as well. My refi company is relying on your assessment.

32. Mr Eaton on June 14, 2007 7:49 am

    so i may stay up to date with the value of my home. would you please tell me when or how offen this site is updated.

33. James Sonstegard on June 18, 2007 3:45 am

    Good Morning-
    Find Zillow very interesting but am really confused as you are showing value of my home dropping from appx. $840K to $663 in the last 2 months? How did your data input cause this to happen?? thanks Jim

34. bob leonard on July 4, 2007 2:16 am

    how do i find out if the home you listed at 30760 Red Mountain road, Hemet ca. 92544 has been sold or is still available? and if it was old how much did it sell for?

    bob

35. Gwen on July 7, 2007 6:54 pm

    I received an invitation on Zillow to join some new community discussion. When I clicked on the link “Demo Neighborhood Page Now” I get a message that it does not exist. Please explain.

    Gwen

36. Drew Meyers on July 8, 2007 9:17 am

    Gwen-
    We mistakenly and unfortunately sent a test message to a subset of our email subscribers, with broken links and erroneous information about features on our site. This message was meant only to test email capabilities and was not intended to be sent outside of the company. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused our community of users – we hate spam as much as you do! Please accept our apologies for the error.

37. Walt Davies on July 8, 2007 4:18 pm

    Tell the guy who doesn’t want his house listed to take down the sign in front of it an remove all adds in all places that they appear.
    Geez does he want to sell or not.

    Walt

38. Kathy on July 9, 2007 8:53 am

    I am so confused!
    The house nextdoor to ours has gone up $40,000 in value in the past 30 days, while ours has gone down $3,000. (Our home is twice the size, but Zillow is reporting the house nextdoor at $230K while ours is supposedly only worth $177K.)
    Another house down the block has just gone up $60,000 in value!
    What in the world are you doing over there at Zillow?!

39. Kathy on July 9, 2007 9:07 am

    To elaborate further, my address is:
    669 Royal Drive, Bailey, CO 80421.
    Try to Zillow your way down the street and hopefully you will understand my confusion.
    I agree with an earlier poster: Bad information is worse than NO information.

    Consumers watch these numbers and assume there is something wrong with our home because of the relative values along our street. Howcum you’re doing this to us?!

40. David G from Zillow.com on July 9, 2007 10:52 am

    Hi Kathy,

    Please don’t take it personally — you live in an area which is difficult to estimate with great accuracy due to the unique attributes of the homes and the high degree of variation among the houses in your neighborhood. As such, we’ve assigned a very large value range to your home’s Zestimate.

    The reason your house’s Zestimate is low is two-fold —> first, we don’t have any sales history for your home. Next, without that sales data we use the tax assessed values to decide which homes are similar to yours and this is where our second problem comes in; you appear to pay significantly less taxes than your neighbors whose homes have similar attributes — which causes your home’s Zestimate value to be low.

    I hope that helps.

41. Kathy on July 9, 2007 1:44 pm

    Thanks for your response, David.

    However, on analysis, the assessor’s data does NOT support the Zillow estimates.

    The assessor’s and Zillow’s values are:
    715 Royal - tax value: $206 - Zestimate $228
    669 Royal - tax value: $203 - Zestimate $177
    510 Royal - tax value: $327 - Zestimate $368

    As you can see, the Zestimates are heavy on 715 and 510, and way low on 669 — merely because we’ve held onto our holdings.
    The assessor believes our home is worth only $3,000 less than 715 Royal, but today Zillow is reporting it’s worth $50,000 less.

    This is a problem!

    Do we have to sell our beautiful Colorado mtn home just in order to establish an appropriate value for Zillow based on the sales price? It’s hard for me to imagine this is the closest you can come until the property has changed hands — which will be lots harder, frankly, thanks to Zillow.

42. THAD on July 9, 2007 4:54 pm

    Kathy… Do you need a tissue?

43. Nathan on July 28, 2007 3:05 am

    Hi, I have looked everywhere on this website to try to get an answer and resolution to my question/problem no zero success so I’m resorting to this Q&A. Hopefully I’ll get an answer in my emailbox. Here goes.

    I have a house that is not listed on Zillow. Every house all all sides of my house is listed though. What gives? Why isn’t mine listed? How can I get it listed? Without a listing I can’t pull up the House Prifile Information and add to it, things like more details, pictures, etc….

    The property address is 717 North Main St, Alpine, UT 84004. You can see the house is set back from the road a ways, but my sister’s house next door to the south is also and her house is listed. I don’t understand why mine isn’t.

    How can I get this problem corrected?

    Thanks,

    Nathan

44. Drew Meyers on July 29, 2007 12:49 pm

    Nathan-
    I apologize that we’ve somehow missed your home in our data import process. Occasionally, records for some homes get missed/mismatched somewhere in the import pipeline which starts with 3rd party data providers gathering the assessment rolls from the county and then passing that data on to us.

    You can add your home to the database — and upload photos and home details — by using the Make Me Move feature (you can always remove the MMM price later) - http://www.zillow.com/postings/MakeMeMove.htm

    Please note that a user-created property will not be given a Zestimate (but it will show up on the map).

45. ninfa troconis on August 11, 2007 8:02 am

    Dear friend,

    I need to tell you that I have o property and the price you list that property is not the correct one bacause the sold price was $256,900 (three month ago) and in the area still around that price ($240 - $300)How I can inter that information. I belive the problem is that you do not register the las transacion yet. How I can add this information to the property. Property address: 11765 W. Atlantic Blvd., Coral Spring, FL 33071

46. Sylvia on September 21, 2007 12:17 pm

    I’m trying to change the price of my property for sale, but can’t do it and it’s very frustrating. Under help section it says “From your home details page, click “Edit posting info.” Or from My Zillow, under Owner Tools, click “Edit posting info.” I can’t find those links and since I’ve reduced the price to try to get a quick sale, it would help it you made it easy for me and others to make a change without this maddening situation!
    PLEASE, if someone out there has a quick fix to this, I’d love to know it.

47. David Gibbons on September 21, 2007 1:30 pm

    Hi Sylvia,

    I checked your account - your home is not currently posted for sale on Zillow. If you click on “Tell us it’s for sale” in the left column, you will be asked to enter the sale price.

    Best wishes for a speedy sale!

48. Bill on September 22, 2007 12:26 pm

    Zillow sucks! Like living in a communist country. Can’t get thier info right, can’t show correct information, can’t delete, on and on and on. THEY will be thier own worst enemy!

49. DavidG on September 22, 2007 2:33 pm

    Bill -

    To edit your home facts on Zillow, please click on “Edit your home facts” in the homeownership section of the homes detail page. To change the public records about the home, please consult your county assesor or recorder. If you home’s for sale, you should be able to edit the posting.

50. Ted on November 16, 2007 10:14 pm

    Why doesn’t Zillow list all the sales in an area? Two homes near us sold a few months ago at very high prices, and don’t show up as sold. Two others were beat up fixers and do show up. So now the prices are slanted lower than they should be for our street. Why don’t all sales get posted?

51. Assem on December 1, 2007 7:45 am

    I agree with most of the comments on here about Zillow’s inaccuracy and almost liable conduct of business. It lists one of my homes as being in a different city. Despite numerous attempts at contacting them and complaining to BBB, they have never responded or changed it. The county record is correct; the mistake is on Zillow’s end. I have considered legal action as this error in cities affects the valuation of the property.

    They list a home in the middle of Cleveland Heights as being in East Cleveland. Cities are about 10 miles apart. Very unreliable.

52. Babsie on January 7, 2008 6:46 am

    Nothing comes up when I put an address and zip code on Zillow. No houses come up with any of the addresses I have put in. Why is that? Is there something wrong with the site? How can I see the information you provide?
    Kind regards,
    Babsie…

53. Sherry on March 31, 2008 2:07 pm

    I’m a RE agent checking out Zillow info for accuracy and found an address in my neighborhood that does not exist. How can this be?
    Also, I wonder if Zillow lists all the MLS listings, actives,solds etc or do we have to enter our listings ourselves? Where do they get their info?

54. Sherry on March 31, 2008 2:10 pm

    Do we get an answer thru email?
    Sherry

55. Drew Meyers on April 1, 2008 4:51 pm

    Sherry-
    We get our listings from two sources. 1) Agents and owners who manually post their listings to Zillow and 2) Large XML feeds from real estate brokerages and technology providers that auto-populate listings on Zillow.

    We currently have roughly 80 million homes on Zillow, but don’t have every home in the county covered. We’re constantly adding homes to our database as we receive them from our data providers. I apologize that we don’t have a record for your home — you can, however, add your home to Zillow by posting a Make Me Move price — click here.

56. Matt on April 29, 2008 6:57 pm

    I was also wondering how zillow got all of its raw data. I know it comes from public records but how can they get it while the rest of us are unable to aquire the information from the source? please let me know

57. David G from Zillow.com on April 30, 2008 3:42 pm

    Matt -

    There are a few data aggregators that collect the information. We then purchase a licenses to use the data they have collected.

58. Vicky on August 1, 2008 10:34 am

    Hi! I had my home listed for sale on Zillow for a while, and the listing ended, but now I am unable to relist it. The zillow system keeps rejecting it. Can anyone please help me out here? Thanks!

59. Anne H. on August 1, 2008 10:36 am

    Hello

    Is there any way to find out over the internet whether a home has a mortgage taken out on it? If so what site could i get that information from? thanks