One thing is absolutely certain- I can truly respect anyone the stands behind their product, knowing the world might criticize the outcome. Rich Barton, CEO of Zillow.com risked it all by placing his own home on Zillow with a Zestimate that even he didn’t fully agree with. Facing certain criticism, the Z.E.O. did it anyway. As a Tech Celeb, he could have hidden behind privacy or any number of excuses, but he chose to stand behind his product. Whatever one wants to say about Zestimates, you certainly have to respect him. Cheers to you, it says a lot about your personal character… The home is now pending.
Read the full article by Rich Barton:
“I’m sure thousands of you have been following the saga of my attempts to sell my house in Seattle (OK, maybe not thousands, but it certainly feels that way). Even the Wall Street Journalgot involved in ribbing me, highlighting the fact that even the CEO of Zillow can’t seem to price and sell his own house with an article recently entitled, “The Boss’s Product Test.” ”
Sock Puppet
May 23, 2007 at 1:50 am
Don’t miss the all important point. He used a realtor too. It’s not Zillow vs Realtor, it’s Realtor vs Realtor + Zillow.
-Athol
B. R.
May 23, 2007 at 7:43 am
No doubt, excellent point…
Louis Cammarosano
May 23, 2007 at 3:13 pm
As I see it, Rich Barton had no choice but to stand by his product as accurate or inaccurate as it may be.
Afterall Zillow has gone to great public lengths to convince people that somehow their web site can accurately value homes for sale. Zillow has gone as far as claiming that they are the “Kelly’s blue book of homevaluations” (a foolish analogy as cars are fungible depreciating assets while home are unique and generally appreciating assets)
Zillow lives on hype and having Barton’s home for sale on Zillow is just another example of it.
Zillow is doing nothing new or innovative by providing their “Zestimates” based on publically available data. HomeGain, the company at which I am the General Manager had an instant homevaluation tool on our site seven years ago!
We recently relaunched our instant home valuation tool and will add upgrades to it tomorrow night.
You can check it out at https://www.homegain.com
Unlike Zillow, we do not claim that it will provide pinpoint accuracy but rather an estimate (a real word, not a sale pitch).
HomeGain also provides a range instead of an exact number to drive home the point.
For some real differences between HomeGain and Zillow see blog thread “Why HomeGain Beats Zillow” at https://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/why-homegain-beats-zillow
Sock Puppet
May 23, 2007 at 6:16 pm
So just how accurate is the HomeGain AVM then? How close to actual sales prices does it get?
Which AVM gets closest to actual sales figures?
-Athol
louis cammarosano
May 23, 2007 at 7:42 pm
It depends. Both HomeGain and Zillow use publically available information to come up with their estimates.
The difference is that HomeGain believes that Realtors play an important role in not only assessing how much your home is worth but going out and actually getting that value for you.
For that reason, HomeGain’s Homevalation tool does not strive to give an exact valuation – we provide a range- as we believe that its nearly impossible to provide such precise valuations.
A house is only worth what you can get for it and a Realtor helps you get your price. Trying to value homes precisely through market data is not the same as the minute by minute market values provided by Nasdaq with respect to heavily traded stocks.
Because of the transparency of the stock market you don’t need a stock broker to get you a better deal on Yahoo or Microsoft stock.
But often to get the best deal on your home you need a Realtor.
HomeGain’s service is designed to help consumers who are interested in working with Realtors find one.
But why not do a side by side comparision of Homegain and Zillow? (just for fun) https://www.homegain.com
Sock Puppet
May 23, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Oh I’m tempted to side by side them believe me.
I’m a newer agent and my split isn’t that great just yet, so I’m kind of concerned that your 30% on my gross commission will eat 80% of my profit though. At least the money gets removed from me at the sale rather than with that HouseValues monthly [not my blog so not using this word].
I think I’d have to do 4.5 times the volume to break even with what I make now. That sounds drastic I know, but I’m crunching the numbers to see how that affects earnings over the long run.
Assuming HomeGain can actually supply me with leads that actually result in a transaction, I’d view these transactions as a strategy of nothing but break even sales in order to seek market share, a higher split and a higher profile.
On the other hand, the average home price in my town is just over $200,000. I figure HomeGain’s slice would be $1800 on a 6% commission. I could get 180,000 Zillow impressions for that much. Basically have my face on every Zillow viewed page in my area for the next 12 months.
Please advise.
louis cammarosano
May 23, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Sock puppet. Sounds like our agent evaluator program may not be for you.
We have other products that may suit your needs.
Our buyerlink product allows you to pay per visitor to your own web site on a cost per visit basis.
Our Source For Seller product allow you to be the featured agent on each hval we deliver and to receive some leads, emails and phone calls from the exposure.
Try this for a complete description of all our products
https://www.homegain.com/agent/realestateagent?ht=hp_rnav_agent_enter
If you have further questions, let’s take this discussion of this thread. You can email me at louis@homegain.com
Sock Puppet
May 23, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Um all those pages seem to do is ask for my personal information.
If I’m to have my name and face beside the AVM, I kind of need to know how accurate it is…
If people are looking for a realtor online, can’t they just Google search for one? I’m so confused why you charge 30% of a gross commission to get someone introduced to a realtor.
-Athol
Louis Cammarosano
May 24, 2007 at 8:01 am
Hi Athol
I’d love to answer your questions here, but this is a blog about Rich Barton and Zestimates and we need to respect the topic.
Please contact me and I can give you more information about HomeGain’s products.
Regards
Louis
HomeGain Hype
October 22, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Why is Louis Cammarosano so hell bent on attacking Zillow every chance he gets? He is always disparaging the Zillow tool yet he trumpets his own tool on HomeGain which is even more inaccurate than Zillow’s. I think it is just a bad case of envy because of the attention Zillow is garnering. BTW anyone who thinks a computer generated program can substitute the services of an appraisser or real estate agent deserves the ill-effects of their lack of common sense.
Barry Preusz
October 18, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I admire anyone who exhibits true character. Zillow could be a more valuable tool to consumers and Realtors if the fake FSBOs were cleaned up. Somehow a validation tool needs to be implemented to screen out the homes for sale that do not even exist.
Barry Preusz