Zillow Inc. (Z)

[Art2Gecko]

hey apparently here is a backdoor to the site if you can't get in..

http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.z?mode=browse

[Art2Gecko]

From the ZillowBlog >>

http://www.zillowblog.com/
We’re flattered, but a little wobbly…
Posted by Spencer Rascoff, CFO & VP Marketing
Categories: Zillow
As you might have noticed, our site is having some growing pains this morning.

We have been overwhelmed by the enormous amount of traffic and are having network capacity issues which has caused our site to go up and down. (We served more than 300,000 page views between midnight and 7am pacific time – what are all of you doing up at that hour?)

Anyway, we’re working our tails off to get back online. Our apologies and thank you for your patience.

02/ 8/06, 08:35 AM PST

[beigledog]

haha

[Mr. Zen]

Our apologies
Due to overwhelming demand, our beta site is down. We'll be back online as soon as possible. Please check with us again later.

[XV19]

I couldn't get the 'zestimator' to work. I'll try again tonight.

[Art2Gecko]

did you add the finished basement?

[XV19]

yeah..and the first shot put my house $100k LESS than what it JUST got appraised at...hmmm...gonna have to tweak the 'my zestimator' thing a bit, eh???

[Art2Gecko]

from the website..

Our apologies
Due to overwhelming demand, our beta site is down. We'll be back online as soon as possible. Please check with us again later.
http://www.zillow.com/

[XV19]

planning on it. Of course, I just walk around to Open Houses in my area and see what people are asking, then check the public records when they close :)

[Art2Gecko]

when the site is back up, check out the info on your home, then you can also add the basement info as well

you can then do a "comp" and compare it to recent sales in your area...

[XV19]

LOLOLOL :)

[Art2Gecko]

just as long as there's no QBID remnants...lol

[XV19]

Can I be your friend?

:)

[Art2Gecko]

yeah, the $64,000 question...lol hoping my brother can get me in early with a "friends and family" pre-IPO offering, but that's still a little ways off I guess. The Ceo wants to get profitable first, just like he did with Expedia.. Apparently they're gonna get revs from advertising, similar to the targeted ad "google model" where say realtors, suppliers, mortgage banks, etc... can advertise targeted to locations that they want to cover.

[XV19]

I'll be watching. When can I buy some stock??? :)

[XV19]

perfect example....I just took out a home equity loan..Our home isn't fancy. 3 br/2bath 1000 sq ft upstair, and 950 sq ft of COMPLELTY finished basement. (den/bedroom/closets/full bath/laundy/wine cellar.

the appraisal DID NOT INCLUDE the basement as 'liveable space', because it's a basement (even with7 foot ceilings, fully insulated/dry walled/carpet/granite floors).

Our 'appraisal' came in $50k LESS than comparable homes in my neighborhood are selling for (and most homes around here sell in less than a week for around 10-15% OVER the asking price. Seattle is insane).

[Art2Gecko]

yeah, seems they took it down for a bit this AM, perhaps for some tweaks or something... Imagine they want it back up asap with that WSJ piece out on them this AM...

[XV19]

sorry Janis..but I cannot WAIT to see what this Zillow thing does. I've bought/sold 4 homes in my life, and the last one took the cake. 32% of the PROFIT I made on the house went to COMMISION.

Realtor do a good job..but being paid a commision on the VALUE of a home is insane. I've yet to have a Realtor prove to me that it takes THAT much more effort to sell an 800K home vs a $400k home.

[XV19]

website is still down..but I can't WAIT!!!

[Art2Gecko]

I appreciate everyone's info this AM

[Art2Gecko]

cool.

[nlightn]

very neat site !!! and what a great service to the buyers and sellers.

on watch and on radar for me.

[BornAgain]

Beautiful site there Art! I work in Real estate it will help all.

[fade]

works perfectly Art, genius runs in your family it seems

[cashwealth]

Fantastic! Don't you just feel lucky??? Now they can generate another unemployed segment, real estate agents and brokers! We go deeper in to this comp age, creating more and more dead trades and industries, hoe you going to make your living??? Flipping burgers or selling chinese hearbs??

cw

[Mr. Zen]

WOW!!! typed in my addy and the price came in a little higher than fair market value, (by about $30k) but there is a market correction going on in this area since mid Dec. so my guess here is that it is based on sold comparisons over the last 6 months which is the appraisers norm.

But I could have saved over $60k this year just in real estate fees... there is definately something here.. on serious watch

[GotOptions?]

Just got off the phone with my brother.. they're releasing the beta version tonight... he had me go through a bunch of stuff just to see how it all was working from the eastern US (he's in Seattle) They are being featured in the Wall street Jounal later this AM but it's on the WSJ website already http://ptech.wsj.com/solution.html

So here's the Zillow website, give her a whirl, and say goodbye to your real estate brokers... http://www.zillow.com


I agree that sites like these are needed, for all of this information is public anyways, current tax assessments, locations and addresses, values of styles of homes, and property values per sq. foot,etc. So there is no reason why this cant all be figured out and displayed quickly to a person scanning for a buy in housing. Not sure that a broker wont be needed but still but this is a very resourceful idea anyways.

[janice shell]

http://www.realtor.com

[aries4747]

For the Rochester, NY area Zillow is unbelievably fun to play with. The addresses I plugged in came back with very accurate info.

[janice shell]

lol, I live in an apartment house...

[powerbattles]

I will continue to follow this one. thanks eom

[Art2Gecko]

so try plugging in your address and see how the valuation comes up...

pretty amazing all the info it comes up with...

[Art2Gecko]

what they have really done, is to create a NATIONAL database of 60+MM homes, that can give consumers, for free.. the same type of info that local realtors get out of their MLS system

[Art2Gecko]

Expedia Ex-CEO Sets Web Real-Estate Venture
By JAMES R. HAGERTY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 13, 2006

The former head of the Expedia Inc. travel Web site said his new company, Zillow.com, within the next six months will begin offering a "beta" test version of a set of Internet tools designed to help people buy and sell homes more efficiently.

The much-anticipated service will involve "information tools" that will help people "take control of the process" of buying and selling real estate, Richard N. Barton, chairman and chief executive of Zillow.com, Seattle, said in an interview.

Mr. Barton is due to discuss his new company in New York today at a conference sponsored by Inman News. Until now, Zillow has said almost nothing publicly about its plans. Zillow's moves have become the subject of intense speculation in the real-estate industry because of Expedia's role in slashing the costs to consumers of booking online reservations for hotels, cars and airplanes.

So far, real-estate brokers have avoided the kind of price war many people predicted in the early days of the Internet. Commission rates have come down only slightly in recent years and still average more than 5%, according to surveys by Real Trends, an industry publication, even though the soaring price of homes has made those fees far higher in dollar terms.

But real-estate brokers are edgy about the possibility of tougher online competition ahead as companies like Google Inc. and Craigslist Inc. add more information about homes for sale, giving consumers more ways to bypass agents.

Mr. Barton didn't provide a full description of his business plan. But he said the company won't operate as a brokerage firm and won't be based on listings of homes for sale. He also declined to give details on the tools to be provided but said they will draw traffic to the Web site, which will sell advertising to companies providing services to home buyers and sellers.

Zillow faces the risk of unrealistically high expectations, as change will come much more slowly in real estate than it did in travel and other businesses such as stock trading, Mr. Barton said. That is largely because home sales typically involve lots of personalized service from agents who know their local markets and how to solve the many problems that can crop up before a transaction is completed. It isn't simply an order-taking business, he noted.

But Mr. Barton said major change in home selling is inevitable over the next five years or so because "there's an unsustainable disconnect" between the commissions charged by most agents and the value of their services. He expects that agents will become more productive and less numerous.

"How it's all going to shake out, I have no idea," Mr. Barton said. "But I'm 100% sure that things are going to change."

Zillow was formed about a year ago and has 75 employees, mostly engineers, said Mr. Barton, who is 38 years old and served as Expedia's chief executive officer until 2003. Expedia, originally created within Microsoft Corp. when Mr. Barton worked there in the mid-1990s, later became a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, New York, which recently completed a spinoff of Expedia to shareholders.

Zillow has raised about $32 million from two venture-capital firms, Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, Mr. Barton said.
http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1393301295215.html

[janice shell]

That sounds interesting, especially the part about taking renovations into account. But how do they plan to make money? Do you have to set up an account?

I see one major problem with this: if you REALLY want to sell your house, you'll have to hire a realtor anyway, or take the risk and trouble of doing it by yourself.

On another topic, Pamela's busy, as always. She really has an incredible energy level. She said cryptically that Megas "isn't cooperating with the SEC". But I do understand that there's stuff she can't tell me because of attorney-client privilege.

[Art2Gecko]

wow, so here's a page where they list the current accuracy of their data based on location.. http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.z#metro

this will obviously get better, and deeper with time as they grow...

[Art2Gecko]

We’re Live! Zillow.com, the Beta, Launches!
Posted by Rich Barton, Chairman
Categories: Zillow
Zillow.com is off to an electrifying start, with the help of chief engineer Garrett McAuliffe. As chairman of Zillow.com, I was offered the inaugural post on our new blog, so I’d like to welcome you on behalf of the 75 employees here at Zillow.com’s Worldwide HQ (okay, it’s our only office) in downtown Seattle, Washington.

Moments ago, a team of very tired, but exhilarated folks plugged in the v1 beta of www.zillow.com, bringing it to life on the Internet.

Zillow began a little over a year ago with a few people in an office, dreaming about how the web might be used to empower everyday people to take more control of the scary, frustrating, and exciting process of buying and selling a home. We experimented with several different ideas early on, but, after talking with many consumers and agents, we landed on the ambitious goal of trying to place a value, what we cleverly call a “Zestimate,” on every house in the country and making this freely and anonymously available to anyone -- kind of a “Kelley Blue Book” for homes. Additionally, we have tools with which anyone can analyze home price histories (like analyzing a stock), look at “comps,” and refine our Zestimates with information that only someone who has been in the house could know.


We’re calling it a “beta” for legitimate reasons, not because it’s chic these days to call websites betas. So far we’ve found data and information on 60 million homes around the country, and for 40 million of those homes we had enough data that our statisticians and engineers could algorithmically make a Zestimate. We’ll be adding breadth and depth as rapidly as possible, but we figured that 40 million Zestimates were too much fun to keep to ourselves. There is a great deal of detail I could go into about how we came up with the Zestimates and what our accuracy is (historical margin of error of 7.2%), but I will leave that for future posts from chief stats man, Dr. Stan.


All of the data and Zestimates, combined with maps, satellite and aerial images (where available), and parcel outlines (where available) have added up to a database that weighs in at over 2 terabytes. The integration of all of this data into a uniform, easy to navigate application has been a fun challenge. Because of the amount of data and the complexity, however, we will have stuff that is just wrong. It’s difficult to robotically test a database this big, so, another reason we are calling it a beta, is that it’s an open test. We thank you for your forbearance and bug reports.

Finally, I’d like to make a comment on our business model, which I’ve found helps divine motives. Zillow.com will make revenues from advertisements on the site. We will always be crystal clear about what is content and what is advertising, just like any respectable content provider, and our advertising will not define our content. However, the beauty of “Web 2.0” is that the content actually does define the advertising. The more relevant the advertising is to what is being done on the page, the more useful it is to consumers. So, we will strive for a high degree of relevance with the advertisements we display. I suppose this makes us a media company, but one that has software development in its bones. We see the process for buying and selling homes as dying for a software productivity application, one that incorporates a huge amount of information, but one that’s goal is to empower people to make better decisions. The beta is our first step. There is more to come.

* Credit goes to Doc Brown from the 1985 movie “Back to the Future”
Gigawatts was pronounced “jigawatts” in the movie)
http://www.zillowblog.com/

[Art2Gecko]

Just got off the phone with my brother.. they're releasing the beta version tonight... he had me go through a bunch of stuff just to see how it all was working from the eastern US (he's in Seattle) They are being featured in the Wall street Jounal later this AM but it's on the WSJ website already http://ptech.wsj.com/solution.html

So here's the Zillow website, give her a whirl, and say goodbye to your real estate brokers... http://www.zillow.com

[XV19]

I sent my wife the jobs listings. She was a VP of Marketing for a number of dotcoms back in the day. :)

nice nice nice.

[BUBBA]

I agree, thanks for the heads up Art2gecko. Looks very interesting. I will keep it on the radar. Any ideas when they will launch it?

[Art2Gecko]

My brother just left expedia a few weeks ago to work there. Will update here as appropriate.

[XV19]

thanks for the headsup!

[Art2Gecko]

To follow the company in it's development, It will IPO eventually, so I'm just starting to keep track of it.

[analyzethis]

Why post something here that isn't public yet?

[Art2Gecko]

Zillow.com Secures Series A Financing [FNJPZRQ]

SEATTLE, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Zillow.com, a pre-launch consumer online real estate service, today announced it received a Series A round of financing with investors Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). Bill Gurley, general partner at Benchmark Capital, and Jay Hoag, founding general partner at TCV, will join Zillow.com's board of directors. The financing terms were not disclosed.
"Both Benchmark and TCV have proven track records of identifying and investing in innovative companies, and we're thrilled to have them help us build something great," said Rich Barton, chairman and CEO of Zillow.com.
Zillow.com is developing a new online real estate service that makes it easier for everyone to get an edge in the home buying and selling process. Zillow.com was founded in early 2005 by Rich Barton, founder and former CEO of Expedia, and Lloyd Frink, former SVP at Expedia. The company has not yet announced a launch date or specific details of the business.
In addition to Bill Gurley and Jay Hoag, Zillow.com's board of directors also includes Rich Barton, chairman and CEO; Lloyd Frink, president; Greg Maffei, president and CFO of Oracle; Gordon Stephenson, co-founder and managing broker of Real Property Associates; and Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia.
About Zillow.com
Coming soon, Zillow.com is a consumer online real estate service created by a group of Internet veterans from Expedia, Microsoft Corp. and other leading online companies. Zillow.com was founded in early 2005, with corporate headquarters in Seattle. Zillow.com(TM) is a trademark of Zillow, Inc.
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs build great technology companies. Benchmark's partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm's portfolio companies. Benchmark's portfolio includes franchise companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. Managing more than $3 billion in committed venture capital, Benchmark focuses on investing in entrepreneurs with original ideas. For more information on Benchmark, visit its web site at www.benchmark.com.
About TCV
Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), founded in 1995, is a leading provider of growth capital to technology companies, providing funds to expansion, late-stage private, and public companies. TCV employs a crossover investment model, which combines venture capital with public market investing and enables TCV to continue to invest in its portfolio companies at the IPO and beyond. TCV manages over $3.3 billion in assets and has invested in over 150 companies, achieving 37 IPOs and 29 other strategic sales or mergers. Leading investments include Actuate, Alteon Websystems, Altiris, CNET, Expedia, InPhonic, Netflix, RealNetworks, Redback Networks, Solect Technology, Webroot and Xylan. TCV has nine partners and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. For more information about TCV, visit www.tcv.com. SOURCE Zillow.com

Amy Bohutinsky of Zillow.com, [phone]Oct05 15:26 GMT
Source PRN PR Newswire
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