My interview with Rich Barton, founder and CEO of Zillow.

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Ah Zillow. What would we do without you?

Before you leave Rich, know this – if nothing else, your baby has provided ample fodder for us real estate bloggers. For that, I thank you.

So, this week in Zillow…

Russ Cofano, part of the Rain City crew and blogger on Seattle PI’s Real Esatate professionals page, defends the value of automated home valuation tools like Zillow.

Certainly, the computerized valuation systems can have errors because they are relying on sometimes inaccurate public data. I think even the folks at Zillow would acknowledge that their system does not provide pinpoint accuracy. That said, when I sold my last home, I had listing presentations from three agents and the suggested listing prices varied by 10% from lowest to highest and not one was close to the other.

Kris and Steve Berg from the San Diego Home Blog, offer their amusing take on what the NCRC will do next.

NCRC attorneys have filed a separate class action lawZuit against Zillow on behalf of Stupid People everywhere. Also named were the makers of the Magic 8 Ball, the Ouija Board and the little paper things found in fortune cookies.

Meanwhile, the guys over at Sellsius are singlehandedly responsible for a spike in Zillow mentions on Technorati as they unleashed a torrent of Zillow related posts. Most interestingly, they take the Bloodhound to task for his apparent change of heart over his rejection of Zillow’s numbers.

Our blogging colleague, Greg Swann, has maintained for a long time in his ongoing series of forcefully written posts that Zillow is intentionally misleading, even deceiving, consumers. He had held that hard line until his apparent epiphany brought on by a little back-slapping, high-fiving by David G of Zillow for his defense of Zillow to the racial bias claims of NCRC.

Greg, for his part, dismisses Sellsius’ accusations.

Having returned from an extended drive-time radio stunt, Sellsius blog spreads a trail of Zillow crumbs. I don’t have time to bother with it…

Ouch.

Personally, I’m going to swear off Zillow for a week. Cold turkey. I’m ripping off the Zillow band-aid. I need to find something else to write about. So, my pledge to you, for the next seven days – the Z-word shall not cross these pages. That is of course, unless something really big happens…

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Zillow’s CEO is starting a hedge fund along with two other Seattle entrepreneurs, says John Cook:

The partners in the fund, which is in the early stages of formation, are Zillow.com Chief Executive Rich Barton, Second Avenue Partners co-founder Nick Hanauer and Delafield Hambrecht Chief Executive J.D. Delafield.

What does this mean for Zillow? Is Barton looking to jump ship?

If I were his VC I wouldn’t be too happy that his attention is being diverted, especially considering its current troubles.

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