Shopping for a new home? Thinking about refinancing? Want to price your next-door neighbor's house – or one across the country?
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It just got a whole lot easier with the debut of Zillow.com.
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Last week, the founders of Expedia.com launched a beta real estate site, offering free valuations on more than 40 million homes across the United States, with data on an additional 20 million homes. That's most homes in the country – not just those for sale.
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And all any Internet user needs to do is enter an address.
In addition to finding a valuation, or a Zestimate? value for homes, as Zillow calls it, consumers can access and view – for free – an enormous amount of information on individual homes, including:
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Zestimate values are updated daily, allowing homeowners to track the value of their largest investment, and giving both buyers and sellers an updated view of the real estate market and individual homes.
Additionally, Zillow's My Zestimator? tool allows users to refine the value of a home for their own use, based on changes or additions to that home. For example, a seller with a recently remodeled kitchen can refine her value based on this change. Zillow calculates the remodel value for her area based on local remodel data and depreciation.
Zillow was started by a group of Internet veterans, including Expedia founder and former CEO Rich Barton and former Expedia Senior Vice President Lloyd Frink. Located in Seattle, Zillow raised $32 million in funding from two leading venture capital firms, Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Venture, as well as employees, directors and private investors.
Where did they come up with the name Zillow?
Zillow evolved from the desire to make zillions of data points for homes accessible to everyone – or maybe it was to make zillions of dollars.
