If any of you have been to southernwinds.com lately, you will notice we now provide Zillow content on our site. While many of my competitors might think of this as controversial, we felt Zillow's overall popularity was hard to ignore. Over the past year depending on what publication you read, Zillow�s popularity ranking was anywhere from the top ten to top three most visited sites on the web.
Why the popularity? Founders Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink famed with their success of Expedia.com, tapped an industry that affects everyone� Real Estate. If you ever invested in the stock market, it was always exciting to check how your investments were doing everyday. Zillow wants to bring that concept to the Real Estate industry through their Zestimate model and comparable sales reports.
The controversy has spread over the last few months with Zillow's accuracy of their data. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Rich and Lloyd and listening to them speak during a tech conference in San Francisco early last year. I came away impressed, but fully understanding that it was all about entertainment. Keep them entertained and they will keep coming back. It's vital they do this for a number of reason, the most important being their revenue is generated by ads. Without massive numbers their ad revenues would suffer.
My experience with using Zillow has been from being fairly in the price range of a home to $50,000 off the market value. So, you may ask, why partner with them? Answer, with millions of visitors each day, we can't simply ignore them. As a real estate broker, if you hired me to sell your home, it's my job to make sure that your home is exposed on every channel possible for maximum exposure. However from a reference point to sell or formulate an offer, it could be a costly mistake.
True market values will never be determined by software (with 100% accuracy) since it depends on numerous factors such as; location, condition, special features, length of time on the market and number of similar homes on the market within the area, school district changes etc. My advice would be to have fun with it and remember it's only entertainment. When you want an accurate value of what your home could sell for contact your local Real Esate professional.
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