Zillow’s COO Spencer Rascoff weighed in on the state of housing on the Fox Business show ”Countdown to the Closing Bell” this afternoon.

Watch Spencer discuss how the tidal wave of foreclosure inventory coming in 2010, negative equity, and vacancy rates continue to dampen the housing sector.

Thanks to all who stopped by our booth and helped make the NAR convention so successful for us; we appreciated getting to speak to so many agents who are using the site regularly to help grow their business. Below are a few words from agents and brokers we spoke with at the show!

While at NAR, Spencer Rascoff, our COO, delivered a fantastic presentation about the Internet Buyer. He posted his powerpoint and video of the presentaiton on his blog.

In looking at our blog posts from October, the top 5 most-viewed celebrity home blog posts on Zillow ranged from a multi-millionaire’s mansion to Whitney Houston’s circular pad.

1. “Ira Rennert’s mansion is largest home in U.S.”
See Ira Rennert’s home (photo below)
See more Sagaponack, NY real estate.

2. “Haunted Houses in Hollywood”
See the Pickfair estate (photo below)
See more Famous Scary Homes

3. “Michael Jackson’s “Wonderland” Compound”
See the Las Vegas home Michael Jackson almost bought (photo below)
See more Las Vegas, NV real estate

4. “Whitney Houston Home For Sale”
See Whitney Houston’s home (photo below)
See more Mendham Township, NJ real estate

5. “New Jersey Real Housewife Danielle Staub Lists Home for $1.45 Million”
See Danielle Staub’s home (photo below)
See more Wayne, NJ real estate

Twilight New Moon fans! Are you looking to expand your Twibrary?  For a shy $3.3 million you can own the on-screen family home of Twilight vampire Edward Cullen in Vancouver, BC.

For millions of fans with OCD (Obsessive Cullen Disorder — the term used to describe anyone who is overly obsessed with Robert Pattinson/Edward Cullen) the multi-million dollar price tag is but a nominal fee to pay to be one step closer to the vampires.

So, what home amenities do vampires like?  If the Cullen home is any indication, they have an affinity for 20-foot ceilings, Koi ponds, granite countertops, modern architecture, and lots of trees.

Interested in taking a voyeuristic tour of the Twilight pad? Well, you better come with your pre-approval letter in hand. This property is available for showings strictly by appointment only.

BTW, Forks, Washington, which is home of Twilight, is reporting a 1000% increase in tourism. Go, Forks!

>> See Forks, WA real estate

>> See additional photos of the New Moon home.

Hat tip, CNN Money.

We’re pleased to announce that Boston.com, the website of the Boston Globe, is now part of the Zillow API program and is using it to power their recent home sales functionality on their real estate landing page.

Though our recent sales data is part of the Local Market Explorer WP Plug-in, Boston.com is the first member of the Zillow API program to build a custom integration utilizing our recent sales data.

In each region, transaction data for the 20 most recently sold properties can be retrieved and displayed. For example, here are recent sales transactions in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Quincy, Milton, Somerville, Newton, Dedham, Everett, Chelsea, Revere, Hartford, CT, Stamford, CT, and Providence, RI. Below is a screen shot for Boston:

Click for full image

In addition to enabling retrieval of sales data at the city level, Boston.com has enabled retrieval of the last sale price and date along with some basic property facts at the address level. Here is an example for 4 Merrick Ave, Brookline, MA.

If you are interested in building a recent sales application, please write up a detailed proposal for what you propose to build and submit it in the description portion of the API upgrade request form (select “Recent Sales Data” in the API request type drop down).

Don’t forget, if you are interested in adding Zestimates, city and neighborhood information, mortgage rates or calculators, or recent sales data to your Web site, come visit the Zillow API.

In the meantime, welcome Boston.com!

In McLean, VA, on a cul-de-sac named Capulet Court, is a home owned by former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and it’s for sale for $1,075,000, reports Big Time Listings.

According to public records, Gonzales purchased the property in 2005 for $1,050,000 — so his asking price is a mere $25,000 more than his purchase price from four years ago — which could be a first in recent months to see an asking price consistent with a rocky market. However, McLean home values are among those that are actually improving. The Zillow Home Value Index for McLean is $745,100 (as of 11/18/09) and shows a 1.8% quarter-over-quarter increase in value.

Gonzales’ home is a center-hall Colonial and is not flashy by any means. With surrounding streets named Timon, Falstaff, Horatio, Macbeth and Oberon, it’s clear the developer for these homes had a love of Shakespeare.

McLean’s close proximity to Washington D.C. makes it a highly desirable locale for government types. It’s also where Ethel Kennedy’s Hickory Hill home is located.

Gonzales is now teaching at Texas Tech University.

I’m happy to announce that Cimmaron Software has become Zillow’s latest Quote API integration provider.

The Zillow Quote API automates quotes submitted by lenders on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace through an application programming interface (API).  When a loan request is submitted by a borrower, lenders using the Zillow Quote API receive the full set of details the borrower provided.  Lenders can instantly create custom loan quotes based on the information the borrower has provided.  Then, the quote is automatically sent back to Zillow for the borrower to view.  With the Zillow Quote API, this process happens almost instantaneously.

By integrating the Zillow Quote API, Cimmaron Software is able to offer individual loan officers, mortgage brokers, mortgage bankers and net branches fast pricing and automated quoting on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.  This allows lenders within Zillow Mortgage Marketplace to serve a larger number of borrowers, helping them benefit from the most competitive mortgage rates available at any given time.

Welcome, Cimmaron Software!  We look forward to seeing quotes from your participating lenders on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

As Zillow grows — we’ve now got an average 8.3 million unique users every month this year, up 60 percent from last year – we’re always trying to improve our site and our search experience.

Today, one of the latest improvements went into effect. If you’re searching for homes on Zillow this morning, you might notice a few changes. We’ve tweaked our search experience with the goal of making searches faster and more streamlined, and more usable for all different types of home shoppers.

If you’re a shopper who knows where you want to look, it’s now easier to constrain your search to certain neighborhoods, ZIP codes or cities. Now, when you search for a specific geography, we’ll show you ONLY homes in that geography.

Here is a search for the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle. Instead of seeing homes in Ballard as well as in other nearby neighborhoods like Sunset Hill and Magnolia, you now see homes only in Ballard. This is particularly useful if you want to set up email alerts to let you know when new homes in a certain neighborhood go on the market. This is easy to do — just set your search criteria and click on the “e-mail alerts” button in the top right corner of the map. A box will open up that will allow you to save your search.

You can then zoom in to get a closer look at the homes on the map, and can filter by price, square footage, days on market and other criteria.

If you’re curious about the surrounding neighborhoods, you can mouse over the map to see the names of the neighborhoods and the number of for-sale, recently-sold and Make Me Move homes in each. One click will move you over to that neighborhood to take a closer look at the homes there.

Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood — or even city to city — is also possible when searching for larger areas.

Here is a search in the entire city of Seattle. By mousing over the map, you can see the names of neighborhoods and the number of for-sale, recently-sold and Make Me Move homes within them. One click will zoom in on the neighborhood that interests you. You can also mouse over the surrounding cities to see their names and number of homes within them, and click to see more details.

To see the search in action, check out Zillow COO Spencer Rascoff’s video on Zillow’s new search experience.

It’s not every day you see a home with a guitar-shaped pool, but we got tipped off to one in Bradenton, FL, that is listed for $1.25 million.

Located at 6176 9th Ave Circle, NE, Bradenton, FL 34212, this unique home was conceived by and built for Aaron Dorfman, an insurance company owner and amateur musician who once visited a rock star’s home in Bel Air, CA, that had a pool in the shape of a guitar. He was so enthralled with the guitar-shaped pool idea that he built his own in 2004.

Aaron and his son, Nicholas, also a guitarist, once jammed with Sarasota resident Dickie Betts of the Allman Brothers. But, now that his son is in college, Aaron feels it’s time to downsize.

The 5,108 square-foot mansion contains four bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms as well as a theater room, game room and two wet bars. In case the weather drops below sixty degrees, the home also has two dual-sided fireplaces; one between the master bedroom and bathroom, the other between the dining and living rooms.

Soaring, 24-foot ceilings (photo above) in the family room provide lots of Florida sunshine and the floors are made from bamboo and pecan. The home is located on a one-acre site, next to the Manatee River and with direct access to the Gulf.

I’m not sure about you, but as a failed guitarist myself, I kind of love this pool.

See more photos of the house with a guitar-shaped pool.

Zillow COO Spencer Rascoff appeared along side Howard Glasser, former HUD official, on CNBC this morning to discuss whether the housing recovery has stalled given the housing start numbers released by the Commerce Department today.  Housing starts were expected to take a moderate gain but instead fell 10.6% in October.

Watch Spencer discuss the latest housing numbers from Zillow’s Homeowner Confidence Survey (84% of people think their home’s value will increase or stay the same in the next six months) and the homebuyer tax credit extension.