Zillow.com Gets Lumps
There’s been a run of publicity on Zillow.com, a site that uses maps to show housing price estimates in the United States. It was noted on Spatially Adjusted today and covered in the New York Times yesterday.
I heard about it in an e-mail first thing this morning. My source said it was Flash (he couldn’t see it on his Mac, and I confirmed it used Flash 8 on my Windows machine) though Mr. Fee says its Ajax (maybe it goes both ways?). The app was only vaguely interesting (yam, yet another mashup) but the responses were fascinating.
From a writer on a private e-mail list:
Should I worry that they are showing lots of houses with prices where houses are not actually located, that the address they claim is mine is in the wrong block of the street, the home facts are half wrong, and the price they estimate is clearly out of the correct ballpark?
Apprently, NPR mentioned it yesterday, when it launched (press release). Today NPR shared listener responses. One said the data in their neighborhood was from the 1970s and their house, built in 1982, was not even on the map! A second chided NPR for providing free advertising to the startup.
The company does have extensive explanations about its data coverage and how it works, but it really doesn’t matter. And, neither did it going down under the load of all this viral marketing. Bottom line: If your house is not there, or the data is old, sites like this seemed to be dismissed out of hand. It’s a tough world out there!
