What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap • Hacker News Board

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#21

Post by cwilkes » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #4

cwilkes wrote: post #3

What annoys me about Zillow is that their "number of days on Zillow" is totally bogus. A house down the street was on the market for 2 months (at a highly inflated value). Time on Zillow? 2 weeks. Maybe the time on Zillow is based on repricing or taking it off the market and putting it back on? Either way if you were looking for homes unless you kept track of an individual house you wouldn't be any wiser. Also amusin…

Well you're not buying the house to be built. You're buying the land and the crappy house. By your logic, you'd be paying for the new house twice. Once you when you pay the builders, and again when you just throw money at the seller of the tear down.

What I meant was that the sellers of house didn't like potential buyers saying "Your house is only worth half of that according to Zillow"

Of course this is an extreme example, I'm not sure how much people use Zestimates when negotiating the price of a house.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#22

Post by patja » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

Looking at the C&D letter, it seems that Zillow is saying any use of their site for commercial use is prohibited. Wouldn't that cover traditional print journalists doing a similar story, or any story that made use of information gleaned from Zillow?

Why didn't Bloomberg receive a C&D for this story which says "Bloomberg used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Group Inc. and Bankrate.com to quantify how much more money millennials would need to earn each year to afford a home in the largest U.S. cities." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/these-are-...

I guess nobody except the EFF really wants to take on this type of fight.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#23

Post by Simulacra » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

saidajigumi wrote: post #5

Mods: the title of this HN post is not the title of the linked article, which at this writing is the somewhat less clickbaity "What Zillow Doesn’t Want You To Know". In fact, the c&d part, while important, could almost be seen as a distraction from the larger issues of MLS listing access discussed in the article.

True, this is true, and technically against the rules. Post Title and Article Title must agree. The poster must be popular or someone affiliated with the mods, else they would've had their posting rights revoked by now.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#24

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

> So as not to violate Zillow.com’s terms of service we have done so manually (hence the limited number of cities).

Can sites have a legally enforceable terms of service that ban automated access? I understand if the automated traffic is high and impacts server performance and cost, but they can ban it even if it's limited? I understand sites need to protect their servers, but if it's publicly accessible and the traffic is reasonable, I'm surprised it's legally enforceable to ban it. And as shown by this blog post, it still can be done manually so the ban isn't very effective.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#25

Post by staunch » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

I lost all faith in Zillow when I realized their estimate was just a number based on their guess at a price per square foot times the square footage...

A properties historical "Zestimate" changes if you update the current square footage. Whatajoke!

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#26

Post by sharkweek » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #16

MikeKusold wrote: post #14

When I was looking for a condo this past summer, I used RedFin. Since RedFin ties into MSLs (basically a list that all realtors use), I knew about listing before my agent could email me about them. I highly recommend it, even if you have a non-RedFin agent.

Zillow used to tie into MLSs but their access was cut in most areas (as described in the article) due to a dispute. Used to be an awesome resource, now it's a ghost town. Would think it's only a matter of time before realtor.com shuts down similar sites like RedFin.

Redfin is a brokerage and thus has full access to the MLS. I'm not sure anyone can shut off Redfin's access so easily because of this?

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#27

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

Simulacra wrote: post #20

cwilkes wrote: post #3

What annoys me about Zillow is that their "number of days on Zillow" is totally bogus. A house down the street was on the market for 2 months (at a highly inflated value). Time on Zillow? 2 weeks. Maybe the time on Zillow is based on repricing or taking it off the market and putting it back on? Either way if you were looking for homes unless you kept track of an individual house you wouldn't be any wiser. Also amusin…

I had this problem a lot. I really wish Zillow allowed you to block houses from your search, regardless of price changes, relistings, etc. I came across the same lot of sad, crappy, and overpriced homes over and over, because Zillow kept erroneously marking them as "just listed!"

Zillow does have a "hide" feature, which I used extensively when house-hunting this year.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#28

Post by dang » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

saidajigumi wrote: post #5

Mods: the title of this HN post is not the title of the linked article, which at this writing is the somewhat less clickbaity "What Zillow Doesn’t Want You To Know". In fact, the c&d part, while important, could almost be seen as a distraction from the larger issues of MLS listing access discussed in the article.

Ok, we reverted to the original title plus a representative phrase from the article.

Submitted title was "Zillow using cease-and-desists to kill posts about their listings". I don't think it broke the rule—more likely the submitter was trying to follow the rule by rewording something linkbaity. But since people don't agree about this we've taken another shot.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#29

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #26

ohitsdom wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zillow used to tie into MLSs but their access was cut in most areas (as described in the article) due to a dispute. Used to be an awesome resource, now it's a ghost town. Would think it's only a matter of time before realtor.com shuts down similar sites like RedFin.

Redfin is a brokerage and thus has full access to the MLS. I'm not sure anyone can shut off Redfin's access so easily because of this?

Ah good info, thanks.

Re: What Zillow doesn't want you to know about its listing gap

#30

Post by justinzollars » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

As a recent home buyer, I found Zillow information to be at least one week out of date. In most cities, that probably isn't a big deal; however in the San Francisco Bay area I found the site pretty useless because all of the homes I was interested in, I was unable to see because they were usually off the market, pending or very late in the process where I was unable to visit the home.

I ended up using a Sotheby's owned site, with accurate data.

Additionally, their Zillow Estimate information is at least 20% low in SF, even by admission of their own analysis: http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc

The benefit I should mention is that I met a great Realtor through their ads, which he admitted to spending thousands of dollars on per month on.