Data Crunching for a Hammock
By: Spencer Rascoff, Zillow COO | June 29, 2006
Our friends over at mpire are doing some pretty interesting things with historical sales data and research to help online shoppers make more informed decisions.
They launched a Home & Garden section and Zillow is an inaugural sponsor. It’s a really clever way to package complex data mining into a digestible form for consumers. At Zillow we’re obsessed with making sure consumers have tools to determine an objective dollar value for their home; mpire is helping consumers price those items that help increase the subjective value of their home.
Check out mpire to find a good hammock for the summer. If you never thought you’d see a price graph of a home’s value before Zillow launched, then wait until you check out mpire’s graphs of the price of wind chimes and thousands of other items.
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Real Estate Oddities, Zillow
Comments
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ryan sims on June 29, 2006 3:06 pm
i have been waiting my entire life for a graph of the price of windchimes. sorry to be snarky, but isn’t there a limit to how useful a graph will be to consumers. information on price fluctuations of big ticket items is useful, but something that costs under $50 bucks? especially if the price trends show no identifiable pattern (seasonality, demand or inflation).
Dave on June 29, 2006 3:45 pm
This is Dave. I’m one of the cofounders of Mpire.
I’m much more excited about pricing trend of antique butter domes, but I get the importance of windchimes:) Ok, seriously, you bring up a totally valid point, one that we’ve discussed a lot internally. We’ve heard from users that for items where the bid/ask price is tight, that the 30 day price trend is not as useful as simply understanding how much that item has been selling for. Clearly, the more the item cost, the more useful the pricing trend graph is going be, but of course we leave it in there for every item:)