{"id":134,"date":"2006-07-25T16:25:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T23:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=134"},"modified":"2007-04-01T11:18:47","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T18:18:47","slug":"debunking-zillowcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/134\/debunking-zillowcom\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking Zillow.com . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Zillow.com<\/a> got<\/a> itself<\/a> a<\/a> ton<\/a> of<\/a> new<\/a> venture<\/a> capital<\/a> yesterday<\/a>, so today seems like a fine time to deconstruct its praxis.<\/p>\n

When Zillow was brand new, Catherine Reagor, the dippy local real estate reporter for the Arizona Republic<\/i> wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Want a reality check? Go to zillow.com, a new Web site with a program that calculates a home’s value for free. It values several Valley homes for tens of thousands less than the price listed on them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the time, I said this in response<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you want to know what your house is worth, do not go to Zillow.com, which delivers completely useless estimates of value for free. Even Net Value Central, a tool used by professionals, lags the market by a month or more. The only way to price a house is to work as rigorously as possible from current and recently-sold listings for extremely similar properties. If you price your house to sell from sources like zillow.com, you will give thousands of dollars away. If you rely on zillow.com to tell you how much to offer on a home, you will see it sold to someone else.<\/p>\n

(You can prove all this to your own satisfaction, if you like. Most of Ms. Reagor’s mistakes seem to come from falling in love with ideas she doesn’t check out. Here she tells us that she ran Zillow.com on live listings and found it came in much lower than the listed prices. How did it do against sold listings? She didn’t check, but you can. Run Zillow.com on the sold homes documented in your local section of the Republic<\/i>. You’ll see that, time after time, Zillow.com is substantially under real-life market results. It’s a useless toy, which Ms. Reagor might have discovered on her own had she bothered to test it properly.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just lately, I needled the Zillowites a little more<\/a>:<\/p>\n

All right, here’s the deal with Zillow.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I decide I’m going to buy you a pair of designer jeans, nothing but the best for you. I know that fit is important, so I go to three of your best friends to get their sizes. Not yours, theirs. I strike Read more<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zillow.com got itself a ton of new venture capital yesterday, so today seems like a fine time to deconstruct its praxis. When Zillow was brand new, Catherine Reagor, the dippy local real estate reporter for the Arizona Republic wrote: Want a reality check? Go to zillow.com, a new Web site with a program that calculates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,6,5,25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-enduring-interest","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-zillowcom","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":580,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/580\/zillowcom-shade-down-creeping-disclaimerism-as-a-subject-changing-gambit\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":0},"title":"Zillow.com shake-down: Creeping disclaimerism as a subject-changing gambit . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Whatever. Just don't pay them off. The issue is a lot bigger than Zillow.com, and Net Exceptionalism is too important an idea to be squandered. Even if you don't know who your friends are, I will hang with you if you will hang tough... Our story so far:Welcome to Race\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":575,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/575\/zillowcom-shake-down-this-is-the-first-shoe-dropping\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":1},"title":"Zillow.com shake-down: This is the first shoe dropping . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"John Cook, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:Zillow has contacted the NCRC, and the two plan to meet soon, Berenbaum said. He expressed confidence that they can resolve the issues in a way that benefits the entire home valuation industry.Actually, the complaint made me think that Yahoo.com is going to have to cough up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":589,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/589\/the-zillowcom-shake-down-preparing-for-the-denouement\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":2},"title":"The Zillow.com shake-down: Preparing for the denouement . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Matrix, The New York Times:Zillow.com, the Web site that provides free home valuations, has been accused by a coalition of community activist groups of undervaluing the homes in black and Latino neighborhoods.The headline of the story: \"A Home Valuation Web Site Is Accused of Discrimination.\" I said the headline\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":591,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/591\/the-zillowcom-shake-down-the-piling-on-begins-and-spencer-tracy-is-nowhere-to-be-found\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":3},"title":"The Zillow.com shake-down: The piling on begins — and Spencer Tracy is nowhere to be found . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Zillow news since the New York Times story broke: Zillow.com accused of helping predatory lenders Zillow.com: So bad it ought to be banned? Zillow Faces Minority Complaint: Rights watchdog group prepares charge that real estate site undervalues homes of non-whites Zillow.com accused of discrimination in home valuations FTC complaint filed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":574,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/574\/welcome-to-race-piracy-20-zillowcom-is-targetted-for-the-crime-of-having-deep-pockets\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":4},"title":"Welcome to Race Piracy 2.0: Zillow.com is targetted for the crime of having deep pockets . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Heads up, folks. It's a shake-down. Poor Zillow.com has gotten itself caught up in a classic Jesse Jackson-style shake-down. This is specious bullshit, and everyone who cares about justice -- and about not having the rest of the net raped by posturing diversity pirates -- should line up with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":597,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/597\/the-zillowcom-shake-down-at-last-a-discouraging-word-about-ncrc\/","url_meta":{"origin":134,"position":5},"title":"The Zillow.com shake-down: At last a discouraging word about NCRC . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"All right, it might be a little naive, but it's something. From the Square Feet Blog at the San Jose Mercury News:So why has the NCRC decided to announce that Zillow is putting the American Dream in peril? What do you think? Genuine concern for consumers, or or just pining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}