ZipRealty Integrates Community Estimating Technology from Realius

It looks like ZipRealty is the brokerage that will bring community estimating to the general public. ZipRealty has always been one of the most progressive brokerages, so the fact that they are the first brokerage to add community estimating technology to their web site is not unexpected. The technology provider behind the integration is Realius.

The two big things to note here are that now 1) anyone browsing listings on ZipRealty can instantly tell the greater community what they think the listing is worth at a given time and 2) anyone browsing listings can see what the ZipRealty community thinks the listing is worth. This will certainly be a controversial feature with sellers since it brings further transparency to what buyers think their home is worth. Back in July, ZipRealty launched their Price Me Now sub domain and enabled anyone to publish their opinion of the value of a specific listing, but they’ve taken it to the next level with this release and added the functionality onto their listing detail pages to expose it to their entire user base (rather than only the people they got to click through to their Price Me Now sub domain). The new redesign of their estimated value tab of their listing detail pages, which includes the Realius community estimate along with three automated valuations, now contains even more great data consumers are interested in. Below is an example screen shot, or here is a live version on their site for a Seattle listing.

Click for larger image

It’s going to take a little bit of time for community estimates to build up to a point where there are 5 or 10 estimates on many listings, but I think it’s a great feature for consumers in the long run. Particularly for a company like Zip that requires registration to view photos, there won’t be much of a barrier for the majority of their users browsing listings to estimate values of listings they are looking at. In addition to the integration on their revised estimated value tab of listing pages, you can also look at all the estimates on a given home and the date they were generated (example). Each user account also be a page that shows you all the estimates they have completed along with their IQ score – here is my page.

I anticipate we’ll see a few real estate enthusiasts become obsessed with building a high IQ by estimating every listing in their area, but it’ll be interesting to see how the IQ concept develops among the agent and broker community. Over the long haul, a high IQ could prove to be a way for agents to demonstrate they know their local market well. If you are an agent or broker, do you see any value to using this feature to estimate listing prices?

The Realius estimating technology is not free (they make some of their money by selling technology to sites such at Zip) — but for the agents and brokers reading this, aside from the cost, do you see any reason not to integrate this functionality in your web site? My guess would be Redfin, but any other guesses as to the next brokerage to add community estimating to their offering?

Congrats to the team at ZipRealty for their latest innovative release!