We’re Opening It Up!
With those four words — “We’re Opening It Up!” — I am pleased, proud, eager and bursting with excitement to announce that we just launched a major upgrade to our site. Ready? We now offer the ability for real estate agents and homeowners to plant virtual “For Sale” signs on Zillow.com. Since we launched in February 2006, this has been one of our most-requested features and now, agents and owners can post homes for sale on Zillow, for free. Our easy posting tool allows photos to be uploaded, space for home descriptions to be written — including “What I love about my home” — and room for ever-important neighborhood commentary. Agents who post homes for sale can publish their own contact information, upload a photo of themselves, and add links to listings on their own Web sites.
Another feature that we’ve just launched — and I must say this feature has planted a permanent smile on everyone’s faces around here since it was conceived — is “Make Me Move™”. MMM, as we affectionately call it, is our twist on what it means to be “For Sale.” Here’s the concept: Think about a price that would entice you to hand over the keys to your home and move. We think it’s a unique and creative way for homeowners to test the waters and gauge interest in their home, even if it’s not actually on the market. Interested home shoppers can then contact them via an e-mail “anonymizer” to get the conversation started. We’re excited to see what happens by facilitating this type of contact for the first time. We invite homeowners to post a Make Me Move price on their home.
In geek speak, Zillow is moving from “read-only” mode to “read-write”. When we launched in February, our goal was to open up the deep repository of information about every home in America — which had been collecting cobwebs in county courthouses for decades — and then layering our Zestimates on top. Today, we begin our second phase, which means owners and real estate professionals can “write to the site.”
And last, we’ve also launched what we call the Real Estate Wiki. We’ve seeded the wiki with 100+ articles to build a strong foundation, and have opened that up to you, the real estate community, to improve and expand. We’re eager to see what you add, edit and create.
We don’t know how many For Sale postings or Make Me Move postings we’ll get, but we’ll be watching and you can, too. In this world of opening up the Web, we’ve added a “snapshot” counter on the home page so we can all watch how many postings and MMM’s we get. Without a doubt, this is going to be very interesting and we’re ready for the ride. As always, we’re eager for your feedback.
Update (12/7, 4am): Our apologies, but we’re experiencing issues with our website related to the release of the new version of the site. We’re working hard on remedying the situation and we’ll keep you updated.
Update (12/7 4:45am): OK, we’re up and the site is stable. Go post your MMM!
Responses (34)