Spencer's Blog

New! Zillow Video Training Center - Your FAQ's Answered!

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:43:06 -0600

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

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.

The training center can be found at www.Zillow.com/Advertising/Videos .

And here is a laundry list of the type of content you'll find online. Let us know if we've missed anything you think Professionals want to know!

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Welcome to Zillow Interact with Zillow through your computer, iPhone or e-mail. Watch these videos to learn the best ways to use the site.

Activate Your Account and Get Started

Why Brokers Use Zillow To Promote Listings

Zillow iPhone App

Short Introduction to Zillow

How to Get E-mail Alerts From Zillow

How to Find a Service Professional in the Directory

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.

The Zestimate: A Guide For Real Estate Professionals

The Zestimate: A Guide For Homeowners, Buyers and Sellers

Local Pages: Discover Local Real Estate Trends and Statistics

Zilow Content For Your Web site

Give Your Home A 'Make Me Move' Price

My Estimator: Create Your Own Home Value Estimate

Correct Your Home's Location On The Map

Can Your Home Be Removed From Zillow?

How To Get Comps

Claim and Edit Your Home On Zillow

How Zillow Handles Duplicate Listing Data

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.

Real Estate Advertising

Best Practices for Advertisers

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.

Introduction To Marketing On Zillow

How To Use Zillow Advice

Post Your Listings On Zillow

Create A Free Professional Profile

Promote An Upcoming Open House

How To Become a Local Expert

How To Become a Zillow All Star

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:

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Overview

Lender Rating System in the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Moderation Policies

Zillow Mortgage Marketplace Moderation Policies

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Rich Barton (Zillow CEO) Speech at Startup Day (Sept09)

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:21:08 -0600

Great speech by Rich Barton, Zillow's CEO.

A must-watch for any entrepreneur.

Video here.

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October Traffic Numbers By City On Zillow

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:28:07 -0600

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

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.

Zillow City Traffic For October 2009
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On Good Morning America this weekend

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:22:52 -0500

Here's the link to my appearance on GMA from this weekend.

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Great real estate ad

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:24:41 -0500

Hat tip to Joel Burslem.

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Why Are My Listings Not Appearing On Zillow?

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:11:14 -0500

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

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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Zillow's new photo viewing on map page = important to include many photos

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:53:45 -0500

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.

Take a look:

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Analyzing housing cycles abroad

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:01:38 -0500

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).

Here is the most interesting graphic, and here is the full 50 page report.

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List-to-sale price ratios

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:39:41 -0500

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.]

Median List / Sale Price Ratio

More US Home Values

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Dolphins Beat Jets! (But not in home values)

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:19:25 -0500

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.

Go Dolphins!

[Learn how to embed graphs like these here.]

Zillow Home Value Index

More US Home Values

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On Bloomberg TV discussing foreclosures

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:13:44 -0500

Here's the analysis of foreclosures moving upscal e.

The startling headline is this -- in 2006, the top 1/3 most expensive homes in each local area made up 16% of foreclosures. Today, the top 1/3 of homes make up 30% of foreclosures.

And here's the video from Bloomberg TV today discussing this and other issues. Sorry to come off as so pessimistic, but I call 'em like I see 'em. No spin here.

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See price cut info in your local market

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:50:52 -0500

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Free Local Housing Data To Embed In Your Blog Posts

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:01:07 -0500

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

Zillow recently launched a Local Info tab which delivers a wealth of information at the national, state, city or even neighborhood and zip code level. For example, you can see percentage of homes that have experienced a price drop or value per square foot. There is also data available such as demographics of the neighborhood and school info.

Now the really cool part. We've added an "embed" button so with a click of a button you can take the a local information chart you custom created, and automatically insert it into your blog. The Local Info tab has enough information that your can customize to have local and interesting blog posts for weeks!

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Everything else

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:19:12 -0500

Zillow gets more than its share of attacks from people dissatisfied with Zestimates, and I spend more time than I'd like discussing Zestimates. So this time we're going to try something different -- for the entire rest of this post, I won't use that word at all. This post is about... Everything Else.

Yes, that's right, Zillow has a LOT more than just home valuations. What else?

About 4 million listings of homes for sale (3,952,453 to be exact). That's basically every listing in the USA. (NAR reports around 4 million homes for sale, and NAR's website Realtor.com says they have 4 million listings.)
Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. This is the best part of Zillow that the fewest people know about. Here's a 2 minute video on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace and here's Sara Bonert's take on ZMM from an agent's perspective.
Zillow Advice. This is an online discussion forum where buyers, sellers, homeowners, agents and lenders discussing real estate issues. It's a terrific place for agents to find business, for free.
iPhone Application. Zillow has by far the #1 real estate application on the iPhone, with around 750,000 downloads. It's an incredible tool, and a must-have app for any iPhone owner.
Housing Data on our "Local Info" pages. Just click on the "Local Info" tab and go nuts. There's a TON of housing data to check out, and all of it is embeddable into blog posts. Just click "embed" in the upper right of a graph and you have a great graphic for a blog post.
Widgets. We offer enough free real estate widgets to create a terrific website, everything from eye candy (e.g., the most expensive homes in a neighborhood) to quizzes (e.g., do you qualify for a loan mod?) to hard core data (e.g., regional real estate statistics).
Blogs: Zillow runs ZillowBlog (an entertaining blog dedicated to real estate issues, with a healthy dose of celebrity real estate porn) and Mortgages Unzipped (a multi-author blog by serious mortgage industry heavyweights).
Dueling Digs. This is an entertaining way to browse through photos of beautiful homes, and a great way to gain inspiration for a remodel.

As you can see, Zillow is about much more than just home valuations. We work hard every day to come up with innovative features that delight our consumers and our real estate & mortgage industry partners. Don't pigeon-hold us into thinking we're just about [you know what].

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Zestimates: they're just a starting point

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:38:32 -0500

This morning, I received an email from the head of marketing at a very large real estate company who is a listing partner of Zillow's. He asked me if I had a canned response to agents asking about Zestimate accuracy. Here's the email that I sent him:

Hi XX,

We have two videos on this topic which we send to a lot of people.

This video is geared towards consumers.

And this video is geared towards real estate professionals.

So the easiest thing for you to do is to send your agents a link to the video

Also here’s a blog post on the topic.

But here are the main points so you also have them in text.

Zestimates are calculated three times per week by computer models that try to approximate what the market value is for almost every home in the country. We crunch numbers on 70 million homes and publish those Zestimates to the website every few days.
We're very transparent about our Zestimate accuracy and we report on it quarterly on the site here. We encourage agents to show the accuracy table (which can be found by clicking on “Zestimate Values & Accuracy” on the bottom of every page of the website). The accuracy table helps agents explain to clients the limitations of the Zestimate, and helps reinforce the importance that a real estate agent has in helping the client think through the value of their home.
Zestimate accuracy varies depending upon the quality of the information we have on the specific home. Also, Zestimates are more accurate on homes that are more similar to other homes that have recently sold; on the other hand, Zestimates are less accurate on more unique homes.
Keep in mind that when a home is listed for sale on Zillow, several things happen with respect to the Zestimate:
- 1. The Zestimate comes off the map page and is replaced with the For Sale price
- 2. The property attributes (e.g., # beds, # baths, sqft, etc) which were previously provided by the county are replaced by the listing information
- 3. Zillow recalculates the Zestimate within a few days based on the new property attributes. The For Sale price of the home is not a direct input into the Zestimate though.
- 4. On the listing page (aka “the home details page”), the Zestimate is removed from the top of the page and replaced with the For Sale price. The Zestimate still appears on the page, but at the very bottom. In some cases, the Zestimate doesn’t appear on the listing page due to an inability to match the address from the listings feed with an existing address in our database.

We tirelessly explain to consumers and agents that Zestimates are just a starting point and they're not the end-all-be-all in figuring out the value of a home. They're just another datapoint which needs to be considered and discussed between real estate agent and client. Best regards, Spencer

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On Fox Business discussing foreclosures

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:51:32 -0500

Here's a link to the video of me discussing foreclosures on Fox Business this morning. It's sobering.

And here's the embed:

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Citysourced: report graffiti with an iPhone app

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:20:36 -0500

As readers of this blog probably know, graffiti is one of my pet peeves. It drives me nuts. It makes me SO mad when I see graffiti in my neighborhood, and I spend about one morning a month cleaning graffiti around Madison Park Seattle.

I had an idea about a year ago to create an iPhone app to allow citizens to report things that need to be repaired around the neighborhood. But, alas, there's a big difference between just having an idea and actually doing something about it.

So kudos to Citysourced, a startup which launched this week with almost exactly the product that I sketched out to my wife after a particularly long graffitti-removal session. I wish them a lot of luck, and I fully expect to be one of their biggest users.

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On CNBC discussing housing

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:02:22 -0500

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New! More Exposure For Your Active Rain Blog!

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:25:08 -0500

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

There are 13,000 of you who have an Active Rain blog AND active profiles on Zillow. As of today, and thru collaboration with the good folks at AR, you now have a link from your Zillow profile to your Active Rain blog! Just one more way people can find the great content so many of you produce.

If you have an active, PROFESSIONAL (not a regular user) account on Zillow, a link to your blog will automatically appear. But we didn't stop there, you can now also add your Twitter handle, a link to your Facebook profile and a link to your LinkedIn information.

I am really excited about this change because it is so important to tie everything you are doing socially, together on the web, to help build your online reputation.

Steps to edit/add your Profile:

1) If you don't already have an active account, here is a link to start building your free Zillow profile.

2) Log on to the site and go to your Profile. Click the Edit button.

3) Next, simply add your information in the respective fields.

4) And you are all done!

Big thanks to Active Rain for making this happen! Also, don't forget that you can include even more (followed) links within the marketing text of your profile. For example, link to some of your favorite or more helpful posts to drive even more traffic to them.
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On CNBC discussing buying vs renting

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:57:17 -0500

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Welcome to Seattle, Greg & Lisa

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:03:11 -0500

A friend of mine, Greg, and his wife Lisa are moving from New York to Seattle. As a fellow former New Yorker, I empathize with his trepidation. It's always daunting moving across the country, but the transition from New York to Seattle can be a little, well, jarring. So to try to make them feel more welcome, I figured I'd jot down a few of my favorite things about Seattle. So why not share it with all of you?

Dear Greg & Lisa,

Welcome to Seattle! Growing up in New York and then LA, I certainly never thought I'd live in Seattle, but I loved it here almost immediately and I think you will too.

Here are a few of my favorite things and places in Seattle...

The weather. Yes that's right, I do love the weather in Seattle. Summers here are gorgeous -- it's 75 degrees with no humidity and no rain from May until October, and it stays light out until 10pm which allows for ample outdoors time. Seattle has the best weather in the country for one-third of the year. The fall season is beautiful here as well; we're just far enough north that the leaves change color. Winters here aren't ideal, but not too bad either: it's basically 45-55 degrees and drizzly from November through April. OK, I agree that California has better weather, but Seattle's winters are much better than the Northeast or Midwest. Overall, I'd say that Seattle weather is terrific, and certainly MUCH BETTER than the stereotype.
Natural beauty. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is a gorgeous part of the country, with abundant lakes, rivers, bays, mountains, and pretty much everything you'd ever want outdoors. There's OK skiing 45 minutes away, very good skiing 90 minutes away, and world class skiing 4 hours away. In fact, other than Denver or Salt Lake City, I'd posit that Seattle is the best major city in the US for skiing proximity. There are more hiking and biking trails here than you could ever see in a lifetime. It's an outdoorsman's dream.
The people. I find Seattleites (as we're known) to be unpretentious and down-to-earth but still sophisticated. There's hardly any elitism, but it's not a social backwater either. It's a perfect balance.

More specifically, here are some of my favorite places in Seattle:

Madison Park -- recently renovated, great for kids, walking distance from my house (and your new house)
Madison Park beach -- crowded in the summer, but fun nonetheless
Madrona Beach -- a short drive from Madison Park, and another good place to take kids
Seward Park -- 10 minute drive along the lake to Seward Park. A gorgeous 3 mile loop around Seward Park with water views the whole way. Great for walks, and an OK playground as well.
Chism Beach and Medina Beach -- nice beaches on the Eastside
Golden Gardens -- a bit of a hike (30 minutes from Madison Park) but a really big beach, with tide pools that are fun for kids at low tide
Discovery Park -- lots of hiking trails and a big sand area up top, as well as a cool beach area with tide pools down below. Parking is a challenge -- go to the Visitor Center and ask for one of their parking passes; you might have to wait there for a bit if you don't go early in the morning.
Tutta Bella -- favorite Italitan restaurant for kids. 3 locations -- closest one to Madison Park is the new one downtown, above Whole Foods (South Lake Union). There's also one on Stone Way, on the way home from the Zoo which is convenient.
Speaking of the Zoo, join it. Great for kids. A surprisingly excellent Zoo for a city as small as Seatle. All outdoors though, so not great on rainy days.
On rainy days, the Aquarium (downtown) and the Pacific Science Center are both great. Both are worth joining. Also, next to the Pacific Science Center (at the Space Needle in Queen Anne) is the Children's Museum -- also worth joining.
Sun Ya - favorite Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. People here call it the "International District" or the "ID", but I call it Chinatown just to be a New Yorker.
Favorite Italian restaurant (other than Tutta Bella): Machiavelli (Capitol Hill, good for takeout because it's on the way home from work), Il Fornaio (Pacific Place Mall downtown), Troiani (across the street from our office), Tuliu (downtown) or Piattia at University Village.
Speaking of U-Village, get to know it. It will become your best friend. Best outdoor mall in the area. Upscale. The alternative is Bellevue Square across the Lake -- also very nice. Bell Square is indoors though, while UVillage is outdoors.
Alki Beach in West Seattle is great for Sunday walks along the boardwalk over there, especially after a huge brunch at Salty's.
Bellingham is only 1.5 hours away and is fun for getaways. Stay at Chrysalis Inn in Fairhaven, on the water. If you go to Bellingham, go to Larrabie State Park -- I can give you good hiking suggestions.
Mt Rainier is 2 hours south. Great place for summer hikes. Some crazy people like Rich or Chloe actually summit it, but normal mortals like us just hike around it. Beautiful place for a day trip, or there's a nice hotel right there in Paradise (the name of the "town" where you park to hike).
The Summit at Snoqualmie is our local ski resort, exactly 45 minutes from downtown Seattle. I taught Sophia to ski there last year and we'll be going there a lot this year as well. It's the perfect place for your daughter to ski with you.
Groceries: Amazon Fresh is awesome. They deliver and it rocks. Alternatively, QFC in UVillage is the nicest grocery store, but Safeway up the hill on Madison is OK too. Bert's (in Madison Park) is ok for small stuff as well. You can set up an account at Bert's so you can charge stuff with just your phone number. This comes in handy a lot when you're across the street at Madison Park and you need to grab something without a wallet. (Also handy if you have a nanny.)
Piecora's Pizza (Capitol Hill) is where we get delivery from. It's just OK, but hey, we're not in New York anymore. Mad Pizza is in Madison Park but I think their pizza isn't very good.
Thai Ginger in Madison Park is good. No delivery though (common theme out here...). Cactus (Mexican) in Madison Park is very good. The other restaurants in Madison Park (Bings, McGilvras, and the Italian place at the end of the street) are not good imo, but they're convenient.
Weekend breakfast / brunch places: Salty's (on Alki in West Seattle, 20-30 minutes away) is a big undertaking but a lot of fun. Madison Park Cafe (across from Madison Park) is great; they also serve dinner but we've never been there. Opens at 8am which is good if you have kids. On the other hand, St Clouds in Madrona (5 minutes away) opens at 9am which is sometimes kind of late for us (our weekends start at 5am because of our youngest's schedule....) but is great as well. They also have dinner.
Nishino is great japanese; Chinoise (Madison Valley) is great pan-asian (pseudo-Chineses + Thai + Japanese). Nishino is very expensive; Chinoise is more reasonable. Neither delivers.
Seattle Gymnastics Academy is where many people (including us) take their kids to do gym stuff. It's about 30 minutes away (north).
The Burke-Gilman trail is a big biking trail that everyone likes. You can pick it up in the U-District.
The Arboretum (see photo above) is 5 minutes from Madison Park and is terrific, especially on hot days because it's in the shade. There are 3 places to park depending upon what you want to do. We usually park "up top" so when you're coming down the hill from Madison Park it's a quick right and then up the hill. Park up there and you can walk on the road or in the trails thru the Arboretum. (We usually do the road so our daughter can ride her bike.) Or you can park down below and walk thru the grass or the dirt trails. Or you can park at the visitor center. Sometimes we park at the visitor center and do the 10 minute walk from there to Lake Washington and check out the boats. From there, look to your left and you can walk along these little foot bridges and thru some mud areas which eventually take you on this little adventure walk that kids love. If you follow that walk you'll end up in the U-District. You can walk across the bridge to Husky Stadium and rent a canoe to take out on the lake. Hard work, but fun for kids.
Likewise you can rent kayaks to take out on Lake Union which is also a lot of fun.
Oh that reminds me, Bellevue Square has a great kids area all the way upstairs where there are boats for kids to play on. It's a madhouse there, but definitely fun for kids.
Take the Victoria Clipper boat to Victoria (Vancouver Island BC), or a float plane (Kenmore Air) from Lake Union there. Or you can drive to Vancouver and take a ferry over to Vancouver Island. Proximity to British Columbia is a big benefit of Seattle.
Join the Madrona Moms email list thru Yahoo Groups
Use the GoCityKids (Parents Connect) website which has an EXCELLENT directory of all the fun stuff going on for kids each week. We use this religiously to find festivals, carnivals, etc for the kids. Definitely use it.

OK that's enough for now. I have a million more things to share, but the rest will have to wait.

As you can tell, one of the best things about Seattle is the outdoor stuff. We really love it here, and I think you will too.

Welcome to Seattle,

Spencer

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Don't Let Mortgage Deals Become a Showstopper

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:32:12 -0500

Via Sara Bonert {Real Estate Internet Marketing} (Zillow):

To minimize risk, many agents now require their buyers get pre-approved before they begin looking at homes. This is a smart tactic, since it's important for buyers to know right from the beginning how much they can afford to spend on a home. In addition, some sellers require buyers to get pre-approved just so they know that a lender has looked at their financial picture.

On Active Rain, when we talk about Zillow, we spend a lot of time talking about real etate and Zestimates, but did you know that there is also a very popular, free mortgage section where Buyers can begin the loan shopping process?

A quick and easy way for your buyers to get pre-approved is to have them visit Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, where they can request custom loan quotes from thousands of lenders. Buyers submit a loan request - anonymously - using the Zip code where they are looking and a target price, along with other information such as the down payment amount, estimated credit score, income and debts.

In just seconds, they receive custom loan quotes from a network of thousands of participating lenders. Buyers find the best quote by sorting, filtering, and comparing quotes side-by-side. They also learn about lenders via lender profiles, ratings and reviews.

Once they've had a chance to compare quotes and lenders, buyers contact lenders to request a pre-approval...lenders don't call them. Borrowers are in control and remain anonymous until they decide to make contact with a lender.

Learn more about how Zillow Mortgage Marketplace works from Mary Miller, Product Management, Mortgage:

And Lenders, if you haven't signed up to quote yet, here is a link where you can try it out and see what type of loan requests have been made in your area.

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Real Estate Agent Survey by Credit Suisse

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:41:39 -0500

Industry Realtor Survey 8-5-2009

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What causes foreclosures? Excessive borrowing, not home price declines

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:17:41 -0500

An interesting paper from several economists including two from Fannie Mae studies the causes of foreclosures in Southern California over the last few years. The paper seeks to determine whether it was home value declines or excessive borrowing at the time of the purchase and in subsequent refis that cause foreclosures. This is the sort of question that's fascinating to economists and academics but doesn't matter much to the homeowner who finds himself out on the street. But it does have important policy implications and it's helpful for us to understand as we start to post mortem the housing crash of the last few years.

Their conclusion? Excessive borrowing is the culprit, more so than home value declines:

"While capital losses resulting from the house prices declines that began, in most cases, in 2006 contributed to incidence of negative equity, excessive borrowing was clearly an equally important contributory factor. In addition, while house price declines were important in explaining the incidence of negative equity, its magnitude was strongly influenced by increased debt usage. Hence, borrower behavior, rather than housing market forces, seems to be the predominant factor affecting outcomes."

Impact of Negative Equity on Foreclosures

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Zillow July 2009 Traffic Stats

Spencer Rascoff (Zillow) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:20:12 -0500

Zillow's July 2009 traffic stats are out, and as usual I'm pleased to share them with you. To my knowledge, we're the only online real estate company that actually publishes our exact traffic statistics each and every month. But that's just how we roll here at Zillow.

So without further ado, Zillow recorded 8.7 million unique visitors in July, 64% more visitors than July 2008. We had 14.6 million visits in July. (We prefer to look at Uniques, but I mention the total number of visits because some other companies sometimes cite Visits. All of our traffic data comes from our internal traffic measurement from Omniture which is the most reliable way to measure traffic -- much more reliable than third party resources that use a representative panel to extrapolate traffic statistics.)

Much more important than our overall traffic and its growth is how big Zillow is in your particular area. So again, I'm pleased to show you here exactly what our traffic is in every city in the country, and its accompanying growth rate.

Here's how to use the data... Our #1 city is Los Angeles where we had 1.6 million visits in July, up 37% year-over-year. In the upper right hand corner of the embedded file below, use the "search" box to look for your city. Sometimes you have to scroll up or down after you search in order to find the yellow highlighted city you were looking for. Enjoy!

Zillow Traffic by City July 2009

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