Released: September 18, 2006

Free online appraisal is great idea but needs work

Source: By Alycia de Mesa, BusinessWeek

Zillow, a Web site that allows buyers and sellers to find the value of homes without providing personal info, is a good idea, however data is often inaccurate and incomplete.

Designed for buyers, sellers and owners, Zillow.com offers real-time valuation data for over 67 million US homes at no cost and without having to enter personal information and endure (often painful) follow-up telemarketing calls.

In combining publicly available real estate data and Microsoft’s web tool Virtual Earth, which produces color satellite photos of homes, Zillow represents the latest in what the press has dubbed “mash-up” technologies. The Seattle-based company has raised to date US$57 million, mainly from venture capitalists.
While Zillow.com is still in its beta stage (and has been since January 2006), the look and feel of the site is easy to follow, yet banal.

To its credit, there isn’t a dearth of information to visually and mentally wade through. Graphically, however, the few images used on the site very much resemble something from a clipart collection. There is even a headline on the splash page exclaiming “Cool Maps and Images!” leaving the feeling that someone’s 12-year-old wrote the copy.

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