NEW: Single Home Value Widget
By: Drew Meyers, Zillow Business Development Specialist | July 16, 2009
A home valuation lookup has been the most common implementation of the Zillow API over the past few years; take a look at Yahoo! Real Estate, Ditech, RealEstateABC, and Southern Winds Realty for examples of this type of implementation. However, we realize not everyone has the technical resources to complete this type of custom integration.
As a result, we’ve built a brand new single home value widget that adds this functionality to your website with a widget that can be copied and pasted onto your site.
You can choose either the iframe version (should work on most sites) or a script version. The widget is available in two sizes — 300 x 445 pixels (screenshot to right) or 160 x 410. For those who want to enable your visitors to look up a home value straight from your site without the technical work required to work with the API, the home value widget is the solution for you.
All our real estate and mortgage widgets also offer free co-branding. This means that if a user clicks over to Zillow.com, your name, contact information and photo stays at the top of the screen throughout their session.
Other new widgets:
Remember to give us feedback on the Zillow Widgets for Web sites section of Zillow Advice — who knows, maybe your idea will be the next widget we end up building.
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Comments
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abe vigoda on July 17, 2009 9:58 am
Why does Zillow continue to overvalue most properties by at least 10%? Why do I see huge spikes in values when a property is being listed for sale?
Jerry E. Stephens on July 17, 2009 10:04 am
I’ve written to Zillow about this before. But no answer. Maybe the blog route is the way to go. You must use public records entirely in establishing relative house valuations. But what do you do when apparent errors have been made, either in the public records or in other data used to establish those valuations. Two houses in Edmond, Oklahoma (zip = 73013): 1405 Rockwood Drive and 1409 Rockwood Drive. The houses are exact twins; both built at the same time in 1978; and with identical floor plans. Identical down to the finishing nails? Well, maybe even to that degree. But 1405 is valued at $161,500 and 1409 at $184,900. How come? Well, 1405 last sold in 1990; 1409 last sold about 2 1/2 or 3 years ago. The 1409 purchase price at that time was somewhere in the $170s. 1409 is now for sale: originally last fall in the $190s, but now reduced to the upper $170s. 1409 was bought at, in my opinion, an over-priced amount at its last sale; was originally listed this time at a terribly inflated price; and still languishes without much apparent interest. All of that still leaves open the question why Zillow.Com continues to list two identical houses at greatly different valuations? Well, incorrect public data may be one reason: 1405 is described as 2,170 sf and 1409 as 2,705 sf. For identical twin properties? Is incorrect publid data enough? Well, it does seem to be for Zillow.Com. But, the bottom line is that 1409 Rockwood Drive remains unsold even though properties in our relatively attractive middle class neighborhood are selling. To be perfectly open, 1405 is my home. And I believe the Zillow valuation is probably pretty close to the correct valuation for that piece of property.