Category Archives: Zillow

Zillow launched Neighborhood Advice. As a home buyer, Neighborhood Advice recommends which friends (via Facebook Connect) to ask about the particular neighborhood or city they are searching in. I would bet almost every single home buyer asks at least a few people — either online or offline — what a particular community they are looking to buy in is like to live in. Most web sites that succeed do so by enabling users to do things THEY ALREADY DO OFFLINE more efficiently online. This is … Read More »

+ Wow, the Zillow acquisition of Diverse Solutions for $7.8 million in cash and stock is big big news for this industry. I’ve got a unique perspective on this announcement for a few reasons: At Virtual Results, we work extremely closely with Diverse Solutions. Their dsIDXpress comes standard with every Predesigned Website that Works (dsSearchAgent is optional), and on most of our customs. I worked for Zillow for almost 5 years & worked with Diverse Solutions as an API partner starting back in 2007 (& 2008). I happen … Read More »

Automated home valuations are a growing trend on real estate websites.  While Zillow’s Zestimates are clearly the standout leaders in this field, there are plenty of others. Eppraisal.  Cyberhomes. Trulia has a one-city beta product in the works, while First American has had its own automated valuation model for quite some time.  Even our own Geek Estate Blogger, Justin Britt, has a new Hawaii Life Value Score, taking a different angle with more of a comparative score valuation. The vast majority of real estate professionals I encounter dismiss the value of these … Read More »

National real estate player Trulia began its foray into the home valuation space yesterday. Trulia Estimates, as they’re called, are currently in beta and available for sold properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Brian Boero of 1000Watt Consulting provides a thourough break down of the Trulia Estimate launch, so I won’t go any deeper. Instead I’ll focus on: What this move means to consumers, How it might affect the business side of things, What it means to SEO, A comparison of Trulia Estimates and Zillow … Read More »

Zillow’s closing stock price went ‘down’ to $33.20,  almost $14 to what they wanted. They got a cool $70 million for it, $20 million more than what they were hoping.  Not bad for a real estate related IPO. By now, everyone is chimed in with how excited Wall St. is with internet stocks, specifically those that are leading the ‘social’ bandwagon; starting with Google’s failed $6 billion offer to Groupon, LinkedIn’s warm reception and Facebooks’s massive valuation — are you kidding me, $100 billion?! No, … Read More »

Zillow just announced a long term deal with ListHub syndication network. This is just smart business — in my mind, another strategic deal to combat the IPO questions they’ll get from investors. And, as a shareholder, I like it. It means they don’t have to worry about ListHub yanking their 2 million listings from 358 MLS’ out from under Zillow during the IPO process. I obviously don’t have insight into the money changing hands as part of this syndication deal (or even if there was … Read More »

Nothing like a bit of exciting news on an otherwise boring Monday to shake things up in the real estate industry. It was announced today that Zillow (my former employer) acquired Postlets, a free syndicator of real estate listings. The company was founded by Asher Matsuda and Raymond Chen in 2005 and today boasts over 350,000 listings and 500,000 registered users (though not sure how many are active every month). Asher and I worked on a few initiatives during my biz dev days at Zillow and … Read More »

When it comes to real estate ad networks – Zillow has Yahoo! Real Estate & hundreds of newspapers. Trulia has CNNMoney. Realtor.com has MSN. Realtor.com just announced their deal with BlockShopper.com yesterday. I think, over the next 12-24 months, we will see a race between Zillow, Trulia, and Move (Realtor.com) to sign up the next wave of niche real estate sites and media outlets to their respective ad networks. Building an inside sales team to sell ads is an extremely expensive undertaking, but required to reach agents all over the country. … Read More »

Shortly after Google announces they will be removing real estate listings from their maps, Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate’s long awaited partnership goes live today. Is this strictly a coincidence? Strategically this is a great move for Zillow, and will effect the real estate industry in several ways. From a real estate agent’s perspective, this expands marketing reach and puts everything into one user interface…saving agents time and allowing them to focus on other tasks. On one of the MLS committees I sit on in Maui, … Read More »

This morning’s Tweet from Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff caught my attention: Zillow’s record January: 15.7 million unique monthly visitors, up 75% year-over-year. Thanks to each and everyone one of you! This seems to be a clear indication that Zillow is growing fast (13 million unique users in December) and pulling away from the pack of real estate portals. Anyone know (and willing to share) February traffic numbers for Trulia and Realtor.com? Full disclosure: I worked for Zillow for 4 1/2 years and am a minor … Read More »