Comments on: Yahoo Launches Home Valuation Tool - Zillow look out?!?

By: RJ Ponzio

RJ Ponzio — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:09:48 +0000

“Zillow is merely a tool” Yes, very good point. Although, people looking for a home have started to rely on the Zestimate since it’s sole function is claiming to know something about the home’s value. If the Zestimate is no to be used for the valuation of a home, why even have it? There should at least be a large disclaimer stating the Zestimate is just a shot-in-the-dark wild guess.

As for contacting Zillow, I feel your pain Joshua . I have been trying to setup a broker feed for my company for over a month now and don’t get any response. I thought Zillow would want our 1,500 listing inventory, but I guess we do not matter to them much yet.

http://www.zillow.com/forum/site/ViewThread.htm?tid=40475

By: Joshua Dorkin

Joshua Dorkin — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 22:11:54 +0000

Zillow is merely a tool to help with the overall picture. You should never use the site alone or any other valuation site for that matter without doing your homework to get a real CMA. One of the best services real estate agents provide is the ability to come up with a relatively good price estimate for a property. Perhaps your parents should look at using one.

Good luck to you and your folks.

By: Greg Isabel

Greg Isabel — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:56:48 +0000

Zillow is way off on it’s estimate of my parents condo in Siesta Key, FL! I have written two e-mails explaining that every two bedroon at 420 Beach Road that has the same square footage should be valued at roughly the same price but to no avail (contacting Zillow to correct this huge discrepency is like personally contacting the President!). My folks have been there for 19 years in #707 and have a low accessed value from the City of Sarasota for tax purposes as they use the condo as their primary residence and qualify for the FL homestead exemption with a yearly cap on raising their condos’ accessed value. And yet their condo is listed at an appraisal of $846,000 while the exact same units on even lower floors of the building are valued at $903,000 to well over 1 million. Needless to say, they are trying to sell and have encountered some people who use Zillow. Zillow should do a little more to make certain of their “Zestimates” which seem as if they are really “guesstimates” at best!

By: Administrator

Administrator — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 06:23:33 +0000

Ahh…the power of blogging. Thanks David for getting in touch. I recieved your email and have spoken with the people you referred me to. We will discuss our ideas with your people and sort things out.

All my best, and again, nice to hear from you!

Josh

By: David Gibbons

David Gibbons — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:09:21 +0000

Hi, it’s David G from Zillow.com

Thanks for the post — we’re very excited about the Yahoo! partnership and the opportunity to provide a Zestimate to a far larger audience.

My apologies that you’ve not received a personal response regarding the feedback you sent us. We read it all but to ensure that Zillow remains a free service, it is not in our plan to staff up a customer service team to personally reply to the thousands of users that send feedback each week.

If you outlined your business proposal in the messages sent to us, those will have been forwarded to the relevant business developer at Zillow. If not, please feel free to e-mail me the details and I’ll pass them on. Again, we’ve received far more interest in partnerships than we can begin to act on at this time — I appreciate your patience.

Thanks again.