Kudos to a weblog that I have just recently come across (thanks to Carnival of Real Estate) on debunking the all-hailed Zillow.com. I have heard a lot of buzz about Zillow, but have never personally checked it out (being a commercial realtor and not nearly as involved in the residential market).
Greg Swann at BloodhoundBlog has done a fantastic analysis of how Zillow.com works…or more properly, how Zillow.com does NOT work. Take a look at the link below to see the thorough discussion of their pricing methodology vs. how Realtors do price comps.
Link: Debunking Zillow.com….
The point is that, whatever it is that Zillow.com might be doing, what it is not doing — what it cannot be doing — is evaluating houses. This simply cannot be done by the methodology Zillow.com has employed.
I will definitley be keeping tabs on his future entries. I suggest you do the same.
(EDIT 12/1/06: corrected misspelling in link to BloodhoudBlog)