www.Zillow.com, an online real estate information provider that estimates housing market values, ranked Honolulu as the second most expensive single-family home market out of 66 U.S. metropolitan areas during the second quarter.
Zillow said the median home value for O’ahu, or Honolulu county, was $632,270 during the April-to-June period. The priciest market was San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif., at $685,653. A distant No. 3 was San Luis Obispo-Atascadero-Paso Robles, Calif., at $537,722.
O’ahu’s estimated median home value was down 3.1 percent from the 2006 second quarter but up 0.2 percent from the first quarter, according to Zillow. www.Zillow.com
Zillow’s estimated values, called Zestimates, are made in part by comparing sale prices of similar homes by area. The estimates are designed to provide a gauge for what homes in a particular area are selling for.
The company said it has data for 68 percent of Hawai’i homes, including some on the Neighbor Islands. Compared with actual sale prices, Zillow figures half its estimates for O’ahu are off by less than 8.2 percent, while half are off by more than 8.2 percent.
The Honolulu Board of Realtors, which puts out data on actual home sales, said the median price of O’ahu single-family homes sold in the second quarter was $665,000, up 3.9 percent from the 2006 second quarter and up 7.3 percent from the first quarter.www.Zillow.com
October 9th, 2009
Zillow.com has received a lot of attention lately in the real estate industry.
In essence, this site allows users to pull up the value on any property in the U.S., ideally their own. The site uses public data to get among other things the property square footage, age, year built, and most important, sales data. It then crunches all this information and comes up with its current valuation, which typically is a wide range. It allows the user to add information to their property that may change the value or that is wrong on the site. It is a pretty interesting site and quite fun to mouse around and look at all the details it pulls up on properties. There are even some satellite photos with different angles that you can view. The site is still in beta testing and they continue to add new features. Take a look at the site here.
When I first heard of Zillow.com earlier this year, there was a conversation out there that this service was going to replace the real estate agent. The thought was it would be very similar to what the founder of Zillow.com did to the travel agent business when he founded Expedia.com. I have heard the same comments many times before when the Internet was coming about and real estate advertising was going online. With each new technology change, that argument comes up. What many people do not understand is that a real estate purchase is vastly different than booking your next vacation. From the dollars involved to the number of occurrences it happens in a persons lifetime, the two fields are vastly different. No matter how much technology changes, the majority of consumers are still going to want a lot of hand holding when it comes to buying or selling a home. That is what a professional real estate agent is for.
I have found that using Zillow to valuate properties in the Big Bear area can be inaccurate.
First of all, Big Bear is a second home resort area with not a lot of commonality between homes. A typical neighborhood in Big Bear consists of a new home, next to older home, next to a smaller home, next to a big home. Zillow.com seems to work best in areas that have a lot of commonality, like a tract of homes with similar size and year built. In those cases, it would probably work great and with some degree of precision.
Secondly, Big Bear properties can vary differently in the views and settings, not to mention properties on the lake as compared to the ones across the street from it. From what I can tell, Zillow sees no difference in the two and leaves it up to the user to figure that out and put whatever value they want on it.
October 9th, 2009
Despite the number of websites that now offer consumers never-ending information, traditionally only available through agents, most consumers still-and should-prefer to bring in a professional if they’re serious about transacting.
Buying and selling real estate are complicated processes, and most consumers prefer to have the wisdom and guidance of a professional. The advance of information online allows consumers to better understand the process and have more meaningful and productive conversations with their agents.
Consumers have an incredible hunger for knowledge, and many of the real estate sites that have launched in recent years aim to satisfy that hunger.
It’s also important to point out that consumers who use the Internet as a significant portion of their home-buying experience tend to spend less time looking at homes with their agents when they’ve been able to gather research online first-perhaps because they have a better grasp on local market conditions and a more clear idea of what they want and can afford.
A recent study by the California Association of Realtors reported that home buyers who used the Internet as a significant portion of their home-buying experience spent an average of two weeks with a Realtor looking at homes, compared to those who did not use the Internet, who spent an average of seven weeks looking for their home. The wealth of tools and information available online takes away a lot of the “hand holding” traditionally expected of real estate agents, which allows them to take on a higher volume of clients, and ultimately, make more money.
In addition, many online real estate sites-such as Zillow.com-offer ways for real estate professionals to market themselves to their consumers, many of whom are a ripe audience for real estate agents. Zillow.com, for example, attracts approximately 4 million users per month, 90% of whom own a home and two-thirds of whom are actively buying or selling-or plan to soon.
What’s more, Zillow allows agents to post their listings for free, complete with contact information and links to their website. Because Zillow includes information on all homes-not just those currently on the market-agents and brokers can also sign up for a unique “Virtual Sold Sign” program, which allows the broker’s logo and the agent’s contact information to become a permanent part of that home’s history. This provides free marketing exposure to the agent and brokerage long after the home has sold.
Lloyd Frink is the president of Zillow.com.
For more information, visit www.zillow.com.
October 9th, 2009