A View on View :: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

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the blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

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Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Mark Evans on Wed 08 Feb 2006 11:30 AM EST | Permanent Link

If you're interested in the red-hot real estate market (or just curious about the value of your home and your neighbours!), Zillow.com has potential to become a valuable tool to quickly find the value of more than 40 million homes in the U.S. It's easy to use and provides information that used to be available to real estate agents. Using the clean and easy interface (there's no requirement to register), a search of a U.S. address produces a home's value, details (# of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size etc.) and the value of comparable homes. A beta version of Zillow.com launched today, although you may have some trouble accessing it due to high traffic volume. The company, started by a group of ex-Expedia.com executives including CEO Rich Barton, said the beta is "just the first step in our long-term mission to empower everyone with information and tools to help them take control of the scary, frustrating and exciting process of buying and selling a home". As for the all-important question of how Zillow plans to make money, it will be from advertising. The company has raised $32-million in venture capital
P.S. How about expanding Zillow into Canada? We need some competition for the Multiple Listing Service!

Update: The domain Zillow.ca is owned by Stuart MacDonald, who started Expedia.ca before becoming senior vice-president of marketing for Expedia.com.

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Comments

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Stuart MacDonald on Wed 08 Feb 2006 07:26 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Thanks for the post, Mark. A bunch of really smart folks, many of them friends and former Expedia colleagues of mine, have been pouring their hearts and brains into making this happen, so positive feedback (heck, any and all feedback - this is a *real* beta ;-)) is most welcome! I have to say that I think they have done some great work.

As far as a Canadian site goes, thanks for the encouragement but there are no immediate plans to bring the service North.

-- Stuart

Re: Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Brent Bannerman on Thu 15 Mar 2007 09:47 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Stuart, I was searching for some canadian real estate data came across your posting. Any update on your site?? REcommend any links??

Thanks and hope it is going well and regulation did not stop you.

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Mark Evans on Wed 08 Feb 2006 09:26 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

stuart,
it looks like zillow did well out the gate with stories in the NYT, seattle intelligencer and a long run near the top of memeorandum. it will be interesting to see how much traffic they get and how their advertising model evolves.

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Gymbo on Wed 08 Feb 2006 09:55 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but this type of site will never show up in Canada. Our federal/provincial privacy laws (PIPEDA) make it extremely difficult to obtain real estate sales info from sources such as municipal assessment offices and the like. In fact, privacy laws limit realtors like myself the type and amount of data we can research from such agencies as Ontario's Municipal Property Assessment Corp. (MPAC). For clarification, MLS is not a public tool, but is a realtor tool. There are public portals like MLS.ca, and there seems to be a common misconception that this is a national MLS site, which of course, it is not.

Re: Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Nadeem on Thu 27 Apr 2006 05:24 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Gymbo can you email me your contact info, i'm working on an internet business idea and need some expertise on our team. You seem to have good knowledge on this space.

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Anonymous on Thu 09 Feb 2006 03:03 PM EST | Permanent Link

I think Canada is a tad bit over regulated when it comes to real estate development and raising capital. Archaic privacy laws that limit the amount of information available for research is something that I disagree with. I'm a fan of the website, thanks for the blogs. If you ever want to check out a conservative porn columinist, visit www.ilovepopwhore.com.

Warmly,

Tatum

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Anonymous on Sun 26 Feb 2006 12:33 PM EST | Permanent Link

i am not sure i would call Zillow.com nor http://www.HomePricemaps.com DATA PORN, i mean aren’t we helping the consumer make better informed decisions, thus not relying upon the realtor as much, or at least giving the consumer the ability to know when his realtor is screwing him over?

since when is that porn?

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by d_bate on Wed 05 Apr 2006 10:49 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Anyone heard of Duru? Looks like a new Real Estate listing site...kinda cool and different. Check it out: goDuru.com

Re: Zillow Tackles Real Estate Market

by Locate Homes on Mon 25 Jun 2007 02:58 PM EDT | Permanent Link

zillow is going to be as big as Google here in the near future. Watch em!

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\n"; $url = parse_url ($this->AD_SERVER . $this->AD_SERVER_FILE . $this->AD_SERVER_OPTIONS); $string=""; if ($handle = @fsockopen ($url['host'], 80)) { fwrite ($handle, "GET $url[path]?$url[query] HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $url[host]\r\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n"); while (!feof($handle)) { $string .= @fread($handle, 40960); } fclose($handle); #Strip HTTP Header $needle = "\r\n\r\n"; $pos = strpos($string, $needle); $string = substr($string, $pos+strlen($needle), strlen($string)); #Write Contents to file #TODO - Add special lock file if($file = fopen($AdFilePath, 'wt')) { if(flock($file, LOCK_EX)) { fwrite($file, $string); flock($file, LOCK_UN); } else { echo("Unable to acquire lock to $AdFilePath"); } fclose($file); } else { echo("Unable to open $AdFilePath for writing"); } } else { #echo "Unable to connect to $url[host]
\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>