Rain City Guide

Before everyone jumps into the pool, every agent and owner must “LOOK before they LEAP”.
The Zillow Zestimate WILL appear, of course, in the same space as your “Property For Sale” listing. The printed data is also picking up the erroneous square footage info and number of bedrooms and baths from the tax records. [...]

I grew up at 4950 Lancaster Avenue My parents purchased it for $7,000 in 1957 or so. They made nothing on it and it is now the hole that you see between the buildings. But they raised seven children there. I lived there from age 3 to age 20 or so when [...]

The folks at Zillow have just released an update to their web site (which first launched in February earlier this year). You can find out more details from the Zillow Blog.
The Cool:
One of the coolest features are scrollable heat-maps (frankly, I thought they’d do this, because it’s been on my Zearch 2.0 To-Do List for [...]

Today I got an email from Haley at Yahoo announcing their new and improved real estate site:
Today Yahoo! Real Estate announced a revamped site which includes comprehensive tools and services to help home seekers chose their dream home. Yahoo! Real Estate is now more tightly integrated with Yahoo! Search and Local, giving users [...]

My engineer friends are asking off screen for more details on a “scientific” approach to valuing property. You know, something they can put on an Excel Spreadsheet Here’s a fairly tried and true method of valuation here in the Seattle Area. This method was so accurate a couple of years ago, [...]

If your Zillow Zestimate is higher than what your home sells for, than you will likely have no trouble appraising for the buyer’s loan, AND you can let it bid up if you get multiple offers without fear that it will not appraise.
If the Zillow Zestimate is lower than what you are able to sell [...]

Much has been written about the accuracy, or lack thereof, of the Zillow Zestimate of a home’s value. What one must remember is that a property can sell at the low point or the high point of its Zestimated range.
I don’t pay much attention to the articles written on bubbles bursting and [...]

In case you haven’t dropped by our home search tool recently, we’ve made some improvements. Changes include…
Market Analysis Tool Improvements
We thought it would be helpful, if you could get a second opinion when you get an estimate. So, we’ve made arrangements with Zillow to use their Zestimate web services on our Market Analysis page. That [...]

As you may or may not know, I emailed you guys a couple of weeks before you unveiled your product to suggest that you consult at least one real estate expert, before going public. I further suggested that since I have sold real estate in five states from coast to coast, that I might [...]

Step 1: Realize that it cannot be done and don’t bother looking for step 2 or step 3!
All the data they use is in the public record and there is currently no way to get them to stop publishing it. (I confirmed this point with them!).