Tag Archives: Zillow

Is your safety being compromized by Zillow?

Real estate agents who blog have been all abuzz today regarding a new I-Phone app from Zillow. The app allows someone driving through a neighborhood to gain detailed info on each home they are near … whether it is for sale or not. Some agents think this is a pretty cool app.

The home’s info is coming from public auditor’s site, so it’s available via a computer anyway. However, having it on an I-Phone really makes the info more immediate. Zillow will be promoting it as a benefit to buyers to learn what a home most recently sold for, what price the home is listed for (if for sale) the number of bedrooms, interior photos if it is for sale, with a phone number to call for the listing agent or the seller if they’re selling it themselves. Of course, the grossly inaccurate Zestimate will be shown as well.

Last June I wrote about Google’s Street View where cars with cameras drove streets taking a driving tour of the neighborhood. Zillow is taking that a step further with even more details on each home.

While this might be handy for legitimate buyers, I wonder if we, as regular homeowners, aren’t losing too much of our privacy. As we know, these things tend to be quickly picked up by “unsavory” characters.

How do you feel about having someone with an I-Phone sitting in a car outside your home pulling up the details of your home? What if your home is for sale … do you want them to be able to see your room arrangement, furniture, electronics, or where the kids’ rooms are?

This scares me. Does it bother you as well?

Copyright © 2009. Elaine Reese, Real Living HER. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.

Is that housing statistic really correct?

I received a call from a student doing a research project on “homes for sale around golf courses” in Ohio. She was using Real Living HER’s site to search by subdivision and she had some questions, which I tried to answer.

She had some questions regarding Wedgewood (Powell) and Tartan Fields (Dublin). As I was telling her how to search by subdivision on Real Living’s site, I also explained that she would have to sort through the data because there were other subdivisions starting with the Wedgewood name that weren’t located around the Wedgewood golf course, such as Wedgewood Park and Wedgewood Place. There is Tartan Fields which IS  around the golf course but Tartan West isn’t. Then in New Albany, the main country club has homes in the MLS system coded as New Albany CC or simply NACC. She probably doesn’t know this and thus, will miss all those homes in her statistics, because the computer will only search for whatever name she puts in the search box.

I’m not sure where she lives, or if she even lives in Ohio, but without knowing all the nuances of the area, her data could be pretty flawed. No doubt she’ll face those same issues with other golf course homes when she does this research for the whole state.

Later after our conversation ended, I couldn’t help but think about what she’ll do with this report. I’m sure she’ll think it’s a pretty accurate report and will probably present it as such. I hope she gets an “A”.

However, what she will be doing with her “findings” is similar to what news reporters or real estate ”experts” do with their research. To quote an NAR ad, “they don’t know what they don’t know“. They gather the data, extrapolate from it, make their analysis, then present the material as FACT.

Something similar is occurring with some dot.com search engines that are trying to compete for $$$$ by capitalizing on the real estate market. The main one is, of course, Realtor.com – the granddaddy formed by the NAR, where buyers can search for homes. Two new upstarts are attempting to take over the prime spot. They are Trulia and Zillow. All three are offering ”estimates” of a home’s value. Zillow was the first to come out with their “Zestimate” which was/is so flawed they were sued. Trulia and Realtor.com have followed suit with their own estimates.

They use computers, algorithms, and other geeky stuff, to determine “value”. Unfortunately, just as with the student’s attempt to gather data, computers don’t know the nuances of the local area. For instance, for my own home, Zillow used a recent sale of a home 6 miles away in another town, in another school district, that has 4BR’s up (mine is a 3BR, 1st floor MBR). No real estate agent would EVER use such a home as a comp when advising sellers on how to price their home.

Real estate agents have a saying that ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL. That’s why we keep advising people to really question what the “experts” are quoting as fact, because we’re in the best position to know how WRONG the data really can be.

Copyright © 2008. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.