“Have you ever gotten screwed buying or selling a house?”

my-currency, the home valuation site, launched earlier this week (see my-currency Crowdsources Home Valuations) and you can now see a video of CEO Karim Tahawi’s presentation at the DEMO conference – he kicks it off with a bang.

Reactions in the industry, on the other hand, have been mixed. Here’s just a sampling…

Paul Kaihla at Business 2.0’s The Real Estate Economy calls it a Zillow-killer; while Bloodhound Blog, gives the site their First Honorary Cheez-Whiz Prize.

More reaction from bloggers:

3 Oceans thinks they’ll be sued in three months.

Altos Research believes the concept of predictive markets may have some legs.

Transparent RE thinks My-Currency could become a local venue where consumers and Realtors can connect.

Realty Thoughts wishes they had launched with a fuller database of properties.

Me? I think my-currency will eventually succumb to people wanting to game the system. Ultimately, Garbage In, Garbage Out. Too many of these social sites fall victim to the unscrupulous nature of the crowd; even the most successful examples of crowd wisdom sites (Digg.com) continue to struggle with this problem (e.g. Spikethevote.com). I think my-currency will fight an uphill battle against the gamers. The real world financial incentive to artificially boost a home’s valuation will likely be too enticing.

Share on Facebook

eppraisal a new automatic valuation site in the vein of Zillow or HouseAmerica. It launched in Beta today, but will be officially launched next week at the NAR convention in New Orleans. It’s brought to you by the guys at Realty Thoughts.

Before we dive in to the site however, we need to check and see if it passes the Web 2.0 litmus test…

1. Soft pastel colors. check
2. Wet floor reflections. check
3. Gradiants. check
4. Ajaxy goodness. check

Good, we can add eppraisal to the Real Estate 2.0 big board. Up she goes.

Seriously, the site looks good and works smoothly as advertised. Agents who want to put their eppraisals on their web sites can contact the company though their eppraisal.com Professional site. In return for spreading eppraisal’s valuations, agents are added to eppraisal’s pool. Users are automatically assigned an agent once they create an account on the site.

My only critique of the site, is unlike Zillow, eppraisal uses a value range rather than a specific dollar figure. While this is probably a safer route to take to avoid some of the pitfalls Zillow is running into; at least in the case of my house, the value range was so broad it was almost meaningless. They may find they have trouble gaining some consumer traction if this is universally the case.

Share on Facebook

Midwest-based broker, Real Living has announced that it has integrated Zillow.com data and valuations on its web site. No news here you say. Loads of companies have incorporated Zillow API, right?

Well think again. Check out how they’ve put them to use. I think it’s excellent.

I love how they’ve successfully tapped into the whole controversy around the accuracy of Zillow’s data, used it as a teaser and then successfully paired it with a call to action, in order to capture the lead.

Brilliant.

Share on Facebook

In a post on Zillow Blog, Rich Barton announced that the next version of Zillow.com (Z2) went live last night. Lots of new features to point out.

Robbie at RCG highlights the scrollable heat maps which Zillow has added to their main map page. I love the heat maps and it’s great to see them included next to the general search results rather than buried in another section. Sadly they are still only available at the city level. I’d love to see them available at the neighborhood level too, but we’ll probably have to wait for Z3 for that.

Probably the biggest announcement however, is that Zillow is tapping homeowners’ knowledge (“owner generated content”) to fill in missing data in their home’s Zestimates, in a new feature they’re calling My Estimate.

Homeowners, can claim now claim their home and edit the specific features that determine how Zillow values it. This is a great idea, that should placate many of the criticisms leveled at Zillow’s previous valuation efforts.

Unfortunately, like many others, I suspect this will lead to some unscrupulous types trying to inflate values or artificially claiming a property. Right now, registering as a home owner only involves me picking the name of the current title holder out of a random list of names. It seems to me that with just a little Googling, it wouldn’t be too hard to game this system.

Zillow promises it has policies in place to deal with this situation. And you can report bogus owners or incorrect information as it stands now. I only hope they’ve staffed their Customer Support departments sufficiently!

So, with all these new changes, does this mean (like Flickr) we’ll be seeing a ‘Gamma’ replacing the ‘Beta’ in Zillow’s logo soon?

Read more on Zillow’s Z2 launch here:

• Techcrunch: Zillow Adds User Generated Home Information
• Seattle PI: Zillow invites owners’ details
• SFGate.com : My house is worth way more than that!
• RED HERRING: Zillow Opens Up, Wiki Style
• Los Angeles Times: Homeowners Can Update Zillow’s Files
  

Share on Facebook

Prudential California steps out as debutante and launches Zillow Zestimates on its site, making it the first major brokerage to integrate Zillow’s home valuations into its site. Ever since announcing their partnership with Yahoo! (which also has an exclusive relationship with Prudential), Zillow has been on a tear spreading its API far and wide, though up until this point, mostly with other technology/Internet companies.

So does this constitute the first official industry endorsement of Zillow’s numbers? Does this mean the real estate industry is prepared to accept Zillow as the final authority on home values? I’m sure Greg over at Bloodhound Blog will have something to say about all of this.

Share on Facebook