Yes, It's Alive! And after previewing Beta Version 1.0, I have discovered
that much like Dr. Frankenstein and his little science project, the Zillow
crew definitely has their work cut out for them.

Zillow has gone online as of today with the stated goal of trying to place a
value (called a "Zestimate" in Zillowspeak) on every house in the country,
and making that valuation information freely and openly available to
consumers without any registration requirements. Zillow's business model
will be advertising based, generating its revenues from ads on the site.

Zillow claims to have found data and information on 60 million homes around
the country, with enough data and information to enable its statisticians
and engineers to algorithmically make a Zestimate on 40 million of those
homes, with a reported margin of error of 7.2%.

I found the available data for Michigan to be spotty at best. The first
property I looked at was in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, which according
to Zillow is located in Washtenaw, rather than Wayne County. Oh well, I
guess the two counties are pretty close to each other. When looking at the
Zestimate, comparable sales were pulled from Southfield, Michigan, which for
anyone unfamiliar with Metro Detroit is like comparing Beverly Hills with El
Segundo.

The Zillow crew has definitely undertaken an ambitious project, and openly
acknowledges that with a database exceeding 2 terabytes in size, there will
undoubtedly be errors. The major challenge for Zillow will be obtaining
accurate tax assessment and property sale information to populate their
database. It sounds like Zillow may be joining local MLSs to try and obtain
property and property sale information datafeeds. Zillow will undoubtedly
have an awesome commodity on their hands once their nationwide property
information database has been compiled. Hopefully we will all still be alive
by the time that database is complete enough to actually provide us with
reliable property valuations nationwide.

Stefan J. Scholl, J.D., ABR, e-PRO