Archive for the ‘web site reviews’ Category

zillow zucks

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

Zillow claims it can value your house. Americans love this as we are obsessed with the value of everything. Thus the success of antique roadshow.

In washington dc they brag they have some of their best data, managing to come up within 20% of your ultimate price 84% of the time and within 10% about 65% of the time.

how good is that? In my neighborhood, a typical house sells for $800,000. They are talking about a swing of $320,000 and $160,000 in the two cases. I bet I could do that well just without any kind of fancy algorithm or magic eight ball.

Another example of a couple of tech guys with NO real estate experience pushing a tool of zero value on an unsophisticated public. Zillow’s a novelty site. If you need solid real estate information, look elzewhere.

Trulia sucks…don’t believe the hype

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I made a foray into trulia.com. can’t see using it to search for my next home.

maybe the same people who make their own beer will enjoy slogging through these incomplete listings of a handful of the properties that are on the market on their own, drifting through the wind without a sale (no pun intended).

Amazing that even in this day and age they have managed to raise $18 million that has clearly been squandered on worthless gimmicks like a “heat map.” Exactly what value does the $18 million heat map have to me as a home buyer? Zilch. Smoke and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen.

The realtor.com (found via Microsoft’s MSN real estate site) has 52 listings in my zip code. Trulia? 15.

The grand total of real estate experience on Trulia’s leadership team? Two years and 10 months.

The commercial world needs a free service like this because there’s no true multiple list in our world. Trulia defines superfluous.

Go ahead. Persuade me I’m wrong.