zillow.com has some pretty cool features.

How would you improve it? what sort of features would be helpful to you?

They are still in beta stage, so I might compile a list of ideas from this topic thread and submit to them as future improvements. Hopefully some will be implemented before they move out of beta and "go live."

toy site but near worthless to real estate agents...

You do know that zillow's goal is to replace real estate companies and agents? Don't you??? If not simply do an archives search or web search for info.

Provide a rating (poor, fair, good, very good, excellent?,
1-10?) for interior and exterior condition of the property.
Show the sales history of the property and weather it was FSBO or MLS.
Provide an up to date link to the tax records and owner information, including # of
bedrooms, baths & garage spaces and assessment data.
Provide an up to date link to the the listing, if it's in the MLS, showing everything
authorized by the MLS thru IDX, including DOM & CDOM.
I think those challenges are a good start.

I don't know that it really matters much what they do, until the accuracy is better. They're still off by over $300,000 for homes in my neighborhood. And that's a lot.

It's a fun site although the public is beginning to rely more on sites like Zillow than real estate professionals that know the market. That is crazy!

- Peter

How do you guess ASSume it's innacurate? Have you even tested this theory?

I bought a house in Austin for 117,000. 6 months later I looked it up on zillow and saw that it is worth 120,000 up 2,600.

That is pretty accurate on the sale. The average costs is based on comps that sold in the area but not sure. I use it. It gave me an understanding at how much lower the average house sells for over it's listing price. That is invaluable.

Geee, anyone can do that for you, you just purchased your home, and the number is there. The bigger question is, is real estate actually appreciating in your area. My guess it that in the last 6 months there has not been any appreciation so the number is wrong.

With Real Estate Everything is local, and everything is about the individual house. There is a town that I market to, if you are on one side of the main ave your 4 bedroom colonial is worth 550K to 650K depending on condition, and on the other side of the ave, same builder same home designs same 4 bedroom colonial is worth 650K to 800K depending on condition and we are talking a matter of blocks. If I look these addresses up on Zillow, they don't see the difference at all, in fact zilliow over prices on the expencive side and gives the same prices as the expencive side on the cheep side.

Zillow, a piece of junk and a waist of time.

I have found that my Zestimates have not been very accurate. The estimate seems to get even worse when a home has a lot of upgrades.