A Carnival of Zillow

In the Blogosphere, a summary of many posts about one topic is called a Carnival. Bloggers get together and take turns at “hosting” the carnival on their blog. My favorite is the Carnival of the Capitalists; a weekly collection of posts about business & entrepreneurship (hosted this week at ProHipHop). Some other carnivals are listed here. This post, then, is a mini-carnival of some notable bloggers that have mentioned Zillow.com. I couldn’t find a Carnival of Real Estate; if you know of one, please comment below.

• This carnival kicks off this with Associate Broker Peggy Wolf, who lives in gorgeous Steamboat Springs, (which looks like my kind of town). Peggy lists Zillow.com among useful tools available to sellers in “How to correctly list your home for sale”. Included are 10 questions to ask prospective listing agents during their interview.
• Ohio Buckeye is using Zillow.com and 3 other resources to find a new home in Ohio. Best wishes for your home-search, OB.
• Sean Brown reports for NARREIA that Zillow’s reception in the Real Estate market has generated a “zestful buzz”. Sean’s thoughtful analysis praises our service, discusses our challenges and ultimately concludes; “All in all, we see this as a good thing for the public. Anytime you can arm the public with knowledge, it’s a good thing.”
• Next up is a well-researched piece over at RealAstute (I love that name). Kevin Shirley compared Zestimates to listing prices and selling prices for 27 recently sold homes in VA and MD. Some Zestimates are missing (we’re working on it), but those that are listed are a good sample, with selling prices well within our quoted accuracy variance. In 30% of these sales, the Zestimate was actually closer to the selling price than the original listing price was.
• Heather Green at Businessweek’s blogspotting thinks Zillow.com is one of a new breed of internet companies and says that “After ten years of tracking the Internet, it feels to me like there is something very different going on now.”
• Charlene Li covers emerging technologies for Forrester Research. Li has been personally involved in a few Real Estate transactions this year, so her expert’s opinions of the online R.E. tools are also written from a users’ perspective. Of Zilow.com, Li says; “as a current house owner thinking about a major rebuild – I use their calculator to figure out how much my house would be worth with specific renovations.”

Note:

A return on investment analysis is a great use of the MyZestimator tool. I did the same thing Charlene did to decide how much to spend on building a weekend getaway on my plot near Mt. Baker, WA. I quickly realized that to recoup my investment, I will need to keep the house plans as simple as possible.

• Todd Waller, a Real Estate Professional, blogs under the tag-line: “Real Estate Simplified with Black-Tie Service”. He debates two opposing opinions about Zillow.com and thinks that: “The fact that publicly available data is now combined on one site with fancy algorithms is something that consumers should know about.”
• Over at Rain City Guide, Dustin received a Zillow Dollar that inspired this hilarious post titled: “The Zillow Conspiracy”. Dustin also posted good a summary of the recent MIT forum in Bellevue that has inspired a lively discussion in its comments section.

Note: Of all of the ideas for promoting awareness about Zillow, this one, by Andy Wand, a Zillow Program Manager, generated the most buzz internally. Don’t worry Dustin, no-one will be locked away because of this. The stickers are easily removed from the bills so we’re not defacing US currency: these green-backs are merely distributing the work of Zillow.

• Over at Open House: A Real Estate Blog, several new internet tools are being taken for a test drive. After trying out Zillow.com and some other online services, Barbara blogs: “I can understand now why Zillow is so popular”.
• Boston Gal (who manages her personal net worth on her blog) debates the merits of using Zestimate values in her personal financial analysis.
• Teresa at Consumer Eye predicts that ““zillow” is destined to become a verb, much the same as “google.””
• 360 Digest noted that when they write about Zillow.com, the number of visitors to their blog increases dramatically …
• … and to round out the Carnival of Zillow; this quote from David Porter at Pacesetter Motgage Company; “The Information Revolution is upon us, like it or not.  Zillow.com has simply taken information and put it in the hands of the consumer.  This is not a bad thing for a professional.  Actually, in my opinion, it makes our jobs easier.  People are starting the process with more information.  The learning curve, for them, is MUCH shorter.”

If you’ve enjoyed reading this please comment and I’ll try to make it a habit. Sorry for disappointing those of you who read the title and expected news of some wild dot.com party. Please note that the opinions expressed by these bloggers are theirs, and not ours. Happy blogging!