Last Thursday, Zillow opened its doors and welcomed about 170 real estate professionals to our 1st “Zillow Open House” hosted here at Zillow headquarters in the Wells Fargo Center to give them a peak into life at Zillow and offer the opportunity to speak with many of the Zillow family members (employees).
Afterwards, everyone was given a tour of the offices and then shuttled over to Pier 70 for food and drink at the Waterfront Seafood Grill.
It was readily apparent that Zillow has such a great group of passionate supporters. Far too often our team is busy cranking out new products and features that we sometimes don’t realize just how many people visit our site. This event was as much of an energy boost for us as it was eye-opening for our guests.
In the end, the open house was such a success that I expect that we will be doing something similar again. Stay tuned!
Sep. 16, 2008 - Real Estate Trade Shows - An Untold Story
Over the past year, everyone here at Zillow has made great strides to reach out to real estate professional community, explain our business model, and show how we can assist brokers and agents alike. One of the primary ways in which we accomplish this is by showing our support at many of the popular industry trade shows. However, what you see at the show doesn’t always tell the whole story and so, in the spirit of transparency here at Zillow, I thought I would share a behind-the-scenes event that happened to me last month.
As coordinator for many of the events that Zillow attends and participates in, it is my duty to see that everything from staffing, marketing material, transportation and logistics, as well as a hundred other little details are taken care of. When it goes right, the process is seamless and invisible.
When it goes wrong, watch out!
My primary challenge was figuring out how I could get Zillow’s backdrop display (think Lexus) to all locations in a timely manner. I thought I had it all figured out and was relieved to receive a confirmation email from UPS informing me that all packages made it to their first destination safe and sound with time to spare…and then the phone rang.
On the other end was a warehouse manager in Austin, TX, explaining that while technically all three of my packages had arrived for the trade show, one was essentially the lid to a box (the lid had the shipping label and that’s why the confirmation email was sent to me). However, the key piece that was missing was what the lid covered: a four-foot high, two-foot wide, and foot and a half long 60-pound box containing the backdrop. It was nowhere to be found. My heart stopped.
For over a week I proceeded to spend “quality time” on the phone having to explain the situation 13 separate times to 13 different people, each of whom gave me a different promise of what would be done and when.
Here’s the really frustrating part about the whole thing: because the lid was delivered (Yup, that’s me in the photo to the right, holding the lid), UPS had to treat this as a damaged goods incident and not a missing package incident. In other words, they wasted time retrieving the lid and inspecting it for damage instead of searching for a lid-less 60-pound box!
In the end — after losing a lot of hair (stress) — I sent the backup display (think Kia) and UPS finally admitted they were at fault. Don’t get me started on what they feel is adequate compensation for this whole fiasco.
So when you are attending a trade show and everything seems to be working just fine, just remember that there’s probably an interesting story or two just waiting to be told.
And for those of you who are attending CAR in October, be sure to stop by the Zillow booth, check out the new backdrop (think Rolls-Royce), and say hello.
P.S. On my trip to San Antonio, my plane ran off the runway. But, that’s another story for another day. (Below is a photo of us walking off the plane, across grass to an awaiting shuttle van).
Aug. 6, 2008 - ZILLOW'S Q2 HOMEOWNER CONFIDENCE SURVEY RESULTS
Hello Townies!
Guess what? Quite a number of homeowners out there are living in LA LA land - and I'm not talking about California per se. A vast majority of homeowners haven't adjusted their personal expectations when it comes to the value of their own home. Almost everyone agrees that house values have dipped, but few of us are willing to accept that for our own homes.
For proof, I don't have to look any further than the lady in the condo two floors above me who has been trying to sell her over-priced place for the last 6 months. Her agent has been trying to explain this disconnect from reality from the very start, but the owner just won't listen to reason. Furthermore, the owner simply cannot understand why she hasn't received a single offer to buy.
62% of U.S. homeowners believe their home’s value has increased or stayed the same in the past year. In actuality, 77% of U.S. homes have declined in value over the past 12 months.
While only 38% of homeowners believe that their home has declined in value, about 77% of homes actually have declined in the last year
(With the obvious exception on the lady upstairs) people living in the West seem to be a little more realistic, with 44% believing their home’s value has increased (28%) or stayed the same (16%); however more homes in the West have lost value, with 88% of Western homes declining over the past year.
Here is an article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle explaining this phenomenon in further detail.
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening with the real estate prices in your area, next week Zillow will release our Q2 Real Estate Market Reports, which chart home value changes for 165 metropolitan statistical areas, the largest report of its kind. And something new this quarter, we will also look at the percentage of homes sold for a loss, and the percentage of home sales that were the result of foreclosures.
For all you media folks out there, you can also join in to our Q2 Market Reports Conference Call scheduled for Tuesday, August 12th, at 11am PT, to hear Dr. Stan Humphries discuss these reports as well as some more findings from today’s survey. To sign up for the Web version of this call, visit here. Or, you can dial in directly at (800) 240-2430.
A seperate conference call for real estate professionals will be conducted by Jorrit Van der Meulen on Thursday, September 4th. (More details to follow.)
Here are some photos from the last Beer For Bloggers event held in NYC back in January.
Everyone had a good time at the last event and I hope all Blogger Connect attendees can make it. I won't be there--I'll be on vacation drinking wine (but I have to pay for that).
Jul. 14, 2008 - WHY ALL THE FUSS OVER FANNIE MAE & FREDDIE MAC
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA or “Fannie Mae”) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC or “Freddie Mac”) are back making headlines for the second time in four years (does anyone remember the scandal arising from a lack of auditing oversight that led to a huge restatement of their financials in ’04, accompanied by the outrageous compensation plans for company executives?) but people don’t really know what these companies do and why they are so important. See if this clarifies things a bit.
Fannie Mae began in 1938 as part of FDR’s New Deal initiative to provide liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. It operated essentially as a monopoly until the government “spun-it” off the books in 1968.
No longer a government agency, it was transformed into what is known as a Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE)—privately owned, publically chartered and because of its relationship with the Federal Government, a greater sense of financial security.
Freddie Mac began in 1970 to provide essentially the same services and eliminate Fannie Mae’s monopolistic hold on the secondary mortgage market.
Together these two serve an important function: They buy mortgages from banks, typically packaging and reselling many of them with a guarantee of repayment. The banks selling the loans receive an infusion of cash to continue lending. And the market buys the mortgage-backed products that pay higher rates of return than Federal bonds with an implied repayment guarantee. Thus, the two GSEs provide a smooth, liquid market for mortgages.
The problem now is that even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages with more stringent lending requirements (i.e., higher down payments, proof of income, lower debt payment ratios, etc.) even those borrowers have begun to default on their mortgages. And this is the reason for concern.
If too many of those borrowers start defaulting, the question becomes just how bad is the market exactly? And how soon will it be before they Federal Government steps in to help these two companies that possess only 1.5% in reserves ($81B in capital to cover $5.3T in loans) to cover all these mortgage-backed products? And if a bailout is necessary, just how high with mortgage rates rise and how much money will be available for mortgage lenders to actually lend?
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