I am so excited to announce that today the Video Training Centerlaunched on Zillow! There are a core group of questions we frequently get, and now we have a resource that answers them in the form of short videos.
Along with FAQs, there are videos that walk through some of the most used marketing tools and resources on the site.
Understanding Zillow Data Data is the backbone of the Zillow Web site, with property records for 90 million homes. Discover how to interpret the numbers, edit online information, or use the data to view local real estate statistics and trends.
Real Estate Advertising Make sure your listings and brand are receiving maximum exposure on Zillow by using innovative and ZIP-code targeted real estate advertising that can help your listings receive up to five times more traffic.
Zillow Marketing Opportunities Promote your listings, yourself, and your expertise on Zillow to the millions of people that visit the site each month. Watch these videos to learn how to effectively do this.
Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Zillow Mortgage Marketplace allows borrowers to shop anonymously for customized mortgage quotes. Confirmed lenders interact with mortgage-shoppers in one of the most innovative and vibrant mortgage centers on the Internet. Learn how you can benefit:
Here are Zillow's local traffic numbers for the month of October. The numbers are down a little this month from our highs in July and August, but this is to be expected as we near the end of the year.
You can also find more traffic information directly on Zillow. If you go to any property on the site, click on Home Info in the left hand column, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see that we publish a running traffic count for the home, zip, county, and state for the month.
Also, if you've created a free account on Zillow, we now send periodic traffic updates via email for your specific listings.
I often get emails asking this question, and usually the answer is one of these three reasons:
1) When creating an account on Zillow,it is essential that the agent register as a professional, not a standard user. When we get a listing feed, we match the email address on the listing with the email address on the profile. The reason we wouldn't post this listing online is that a standard user can't represent home that has a listing agent. So if listings aren't online, first make sure it is a professional account that has been created, and not a standard one. This is easily changed on the profile, or click the gray "flag" button and our customer service can assist with the switch.
2) Often when I get this question, the listings actually are online, but they aren't in the My Listings section of the agent's profile. As mentioned in #1, we match the email address of the listing to the email address on the profile. It is important to create the agent profile using the same email address as what the feed provider has on record. For example, say a profile is created using the address sarab@yahoo.com, but then the franchise is giving us listings using sarab@era.com. The listings would be on the site, but the listings and profile would not be tied together. Again, this is easily corrected be updating the email address on the profile.
3) Agents often assume that we are getting direct feeds from their MLSs, therefore the listings should be online. The truth is, only a handful of MLSs give us direct feeds. However, a large majority use syndication services on their members' behalf, like ListHub or Point2. Often with these services there is some type of opt-in required by either the agent or broker before the syndication can begin, so make sure the appropriate controls have been set up if you MLS is contracting with such syndication services.
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We changed the user interface on Zillow for looking at photos on the Map & List page the other day, and it's pretty slick. The new site design makes it more important than ever to include all of your listing's photos -- we allow up to 50 photos.
This study, "Booms and Busts in Housing Markets", from the European Central Bank (July 2009) provides an interesting look at housing cycles abroad. Specifically, it looks at long term trends in 18 countries from 1980-2007. Like most academic papers, it doesn't provide any earth-shattering analysis. But it does provide an interesting framework with which to understanding housing cycles, as well as a whole lot of proof of things that you probably already knew (e.g., interest rate policies affect housing booms).
One way to gauge the strength of a local real estate market is to look at the variance between the last listing price and the final sale price. Remember the good old days when homes actually sold for MORE than asking price? Ah, memories.
In the graph below, I compare list-to-sale price ratios over the last year for the US (red line), New York metro (yellow), Los Angeles metro (green), Chicago metro (grey) and Boston metro (blue). The metric divides the list price by the sale price so 1.0 would indicate that homes were selling for exactly the asking price and 1.1 would indicate that homes are selling for less than the asking price. (For example, if a home with a list price of $250,000 sells for $200,000, that would be a 1.25 ratio.)
So what does this chart say? It says that things are getting better, especially in Los Angeles. In LA, homes are basically now selling for their list price (1.01) whereas a year ago the ratio was close to 1.1 (meaning that the list price was 10% higher than the sale price). Nationwide, things appear to be getting better also -- the orange line is getting closer to 1.0. In Chicago, the asking price is still about 6% higher than the selling price.
[Want to embed free graphs like this in your blog posts? Learn how here.]
In honor of my Miami Dolphins' victory over the evil New York Jets tonight....
Here is the Zillow Home Value Index for Miami vs New York. As you can see, home values in New York (the yellow line) are well above the national average (the red line), while the steep decline in Miami home values has caused the median value of all homes there to now be lower than the USA. It also looks like home values in the New York area might have already bottomed, whereas Miami is still falling.
The good news for Dolphans is that it's a heck of a lot cheaper to buy a house in Miami than New York.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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