Zestimates from Zillow have proven to be a tremendous hit with the public, although they’ve been criticized for being too high or too low in some cases. Now Yahoo has taken Zillow’s home valuation data (they’ve had a partnership for several months) and combined it with similar data from other providers, eppraisal.com and reply.com, in a new and improved Home Values section of Yahoo Real Estate.
Here’s a provided example in Seattle, with valuations in the upper right. And here’s the Yahoo Local & Maps blog post that explains the new functionality in further detail.
Related Topics: Search Engines: Real Estate | Yahoo: Real Estate
By selecting a relatively unknown company whose core business is not even real estate (Reply) and a start up (eppraisal)to provide side by side instant homevaluations with Zillow, Yahoo wittingly or unwittingly severely damages Zillow’s claim that they are the “Kelly’s Blue Book of Home Valuations”
(a claim I’ve always had issue with because its not true and its a foolish analogy as cars are fungible depreciating assets, while homes are unique and generally appreciating assets)
That Reply can also run public data through an algorithm and spit out a valution highlights that what Zillow is doing is nothing special and not worthy of the hype they have created simply by taking last millenium’s technology and wrapping it in a big “Z”. “Zestimates” E-”Z” ads etc.
Oh, by the way HomeGain.com, the company at which I am the General Manager, also has an instant homevaluation tool-the descendant of our original instant homevaluation tool from 1999.
Yahoo’s integration is slick and great for consumers.