Zillow - It’s more than just a price

Sara Bonert, one of Zillow’s experts, kindly agreed to kick off The Property Pundit’s guest post week. Thank you very much for participating, Sara! My wife and I use Zillow a lot, and we still learned of Zillow features we weren’t aware of thanks to Sara. Sara regularly blogs at activerain, and I urge you to check her out. You’ll learn a lot. Here’s Sara:

When Steve asked me to guest blog, I thought I should do a post that ties in my background with how I came to work for Zillow. So, when I think back to my early days and the first investment property I ever bought, I think man, did I get lucky. I actually cash flowed the property for a few years and sold for a good profit. But seriously, it was luck. Now, with all of the great online tools available for investors today, luck is still a factor, but savvy real estate investors have more technology and tricks to tap into.

Today, I am part of the Broker and Industry Relations team for Zillow and part of my responsibilities is to help investors and real estate pros learn about tools they can use – for free – to make better real estate decisions.

Database of 70 million homes – We have taken as much public record data as we could get our hands on, and organized it into a single record for each home. When available, you can see information such as the last time the house sold, core facts about the home, bird’s-eye view images of a home and, of course, our Zestimate (a computer generated home valuation). Want to know what kind of city view they have? Or the amount of rent the home is currently fetching? On each house you can post a question and anyone — including the home owner or listing agent — can answer it.

Make Me Move – If you’re an investor, either you or your Realtor are constantly scouring the MLS or FSBO sites regularly for the next great deal. While you can also do this on Zillow, we have a whole other database of homes you can search. “Make Me Move” is where the owner doesn’t necessarily have the home on the market, but they have set their magic price that will make them turn over the keys. This is a whole new pool for you to prospect.

Quarterly Trend Reports - Our statisticians look at zillions of data points each and every day, and are able to spot housing trends based on that information. We package this information and release reports each Quarter, found in the footer of each page on Zillow. This data can be viewed at a national level, or broken down to a neighborhood view. For example, in the Chicago area, Quarter over Quarter I can see that Southside Area in Joliet, Will County, had the best appreciation at 13.2%. Year over Year Oak Park has remained strong, appreciating 16.5% with a median home price today of $194,096. However, Oak Brook hasn’t fared nearly as good, experiencing a 11.8% decrease in appreciation from Q2 of 2006.

Discussions Forums – Are commercial investments for you? How is the market in North Carolina? Want to connect with other real estate professional across the country? Then get involved in our Discussions Forums. It is a great way to give and get advice on a number of real estate topics.

Our hope at Zillow is to bring all of the interesting conversations that are happening every day about real estate across the country online. When you open these conversations up for anyone to join in, fascinating comments are made and information is passed along among community members. As we continue to roll out and refine new tools on the site, watch for announcements on the Zillow Blog. Even if we’re not talking about Zillow tools, we’re posting interesting information, such as what the Extreme Home Makeover team is up to and news that Red Sox owner John Henry wants to tear down a mansion he just purchased in Brookline for $16 million. Or, what’s up with that brothel in Westchester County, NY?

Thanks for the space, Steve!