Zillow…one of the most useful tools developed for residential real estate

Zillow.com is an online real estate service that has valuable tools and information for everyone involved in residential real estate. (This service is currently limited to the US market. However, it has a lot of  informative topics too about real estate that could be useful to anyone.)

The name Zillow evolved from the words Zillion and Pillow.  

Zillion – for the zillions of data points for homes accessible to everyone.  

Pillow – because a home is where you lay your head to rest at night.

Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink are the founders of Zillow.com.  They are the same people behind the successful travel website Expedia.com  They were brainstorming for a new venture when they came up with the idea of real estate.  They wanted to give ordinary buyers and sellers the same valuable tools and data that the real estate agents are using.   Afterall, for most of us; our home is the most important investment. Zillow’s goal is to help people be smarter in their real estate decisions.

Here are some of its useful tools:

Search  One can search for homes for sale, sold or with "Make Me Move™ " prices on one map.

Make Me Move™  With the "Make Me Move™ option, homeowners who are not really selling their home have the choice to sell it, if someone offers the right price. 

Zestimate™  It has the estimated valuation of your home’s worth.

My Estimator It allows you to refine the value of your home based on your improvements.

Comps You can find here the recently sold homes and neighborhood trends.

Buyer’s Wiki It is a home buying guide by buyers.  It has a lot of informative topics from starting to buy a home to closing the deal.

Seller’s Wiki It is a house selling guide by sellers.  It has a lot of helpful topics that will guide you through the selling process, where to start and closing the deal.

Post for Sale  This is where agents and homeowners can post homes for FREE.

Claim your home   With the owner tools you can add a photo and other details to your home.

Get a loan  It will guide you about mortgage, lenders, financing and refinancing your home.

More useful tools and information can be obtained by buyers, owners, sellers and agents from their site.

They also have their own blog.  It has a lot of useful information about Zillow and real estate in general. You can also suggest a topic that you’d like them to write about.

Overall, I find Zillow as a very useful tool for real estate enthusiasts or anyone who wants to be knowledgeable about the ins and out of real estate.  I just wish they could offer something similar to other countries.  We have a similar site in Australia and New Zealand too, called RPData but its not entirely free and the tools are not as advanced as Zillow yet.  Nothing beats a free informative website like Zillow!  Offering it for free makes it more appealing, thus making more people knowledgeable in real estate and more confident in their property buying or selling.