Zillow’s Smart Search Ain’t So

Zillow (Big Z*) just announced its new Smart Search feature. Here’s our review: It ain’t. It’s as fuzzy as most of the real estate search engines out there.

According to Dave Beitel, Zillow’s chief technology officer,

Smart Search sets a new standard for online real estate search and solves one of the biggest challenges on the Internet today by taking an enormous amount of data and displaying it in a way that is easy to digest and meaningful to each of our users.

OK Dave, let’s check it out. Search “for sale” properties in the neighborhood of the upper East Side of NY, NY.

The first property result is a house in Spanish Fort, Alabama that just happens to have the same “neighborhood” name. (There are 3 other Alabama properties in the 21 results).

According to Zillow’s press release:

The neighborhood pages are also now easier to find, accessible through the home page, through links embedded in Smart Search results, and on individual home detail pages…

Oh yeah? If you click the “neighborhood link” in these Alabama listings, Zillow gives you information on the upper east side of New York! Dang!

OK, so let’s just try the neighborhood “upper east side”, shall we.

The results show these choices. That’s great, but where the heck is upper east side NY? And what happened to Upper East Side, Alabama? Boy, I’m more confused. Double Dang!

What’s amusing is Zillow says it’s using cutting edge, patent-pending technology. Cutting edge? Like a butter knife.

Now, in all fairness to Zillow, and Dave Beitel, (we just got a little peeved by Dave’s “new standard” “solving… the biggest challenge” puffery), real estate search sucks because the guys and gals building the engine don’t know real estate and the needs of the people searching. (hmm… it has to be guys because my wife would say– hey, what’s this Alabama property doing in here).

What is useful (once the link bug is fixed) is neighborhood information is made available in a search result— but that is not news or new. Sites like eNeighborhoods , Sperling’s Best Places , and others, have been providing neighborhood information for sometime. (See a sample eNeighborhoods’ report here.)

As for the Zindex reports and the silly graphs included with the results, they do not enlighten buyers. They simply add more fuzz.

* We’re coining a new name for Zillow— Big Z (’cause we like coining stuff)

Technorati Tags: real estate search, zillow smart search, technology

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sellsius

That's great Drew. You guys are on the ball.

If a consumer only wants to see condos in a particular area is that possible now? If not, will it be in the near future. In NYC, the preference is usually one or the other & it would be great to search by property type

Drew M from Zillow

Just a heads up that we got the geo-coding issue resolved -- the home mentioned is now correctly geo-coded to show up in Alabama.

http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=727...

sellsius

Zillow cannot accurately value "individual" homes without physically seeing them. That's just a fact. To say "close is good enough" sounds reasonable but real estate is too important an investment to rely on close. IMO they soon found that pushing inaccurate home values was a mistake and they had to build out the site to minimize the effect of their zestimates. I think you will see this continue. Of course, there is a solution, but I won't share it here for free. They'd have to write me a check first :)

Zillow is doing other good things but the zestimate will continue to be the albatross around their necks. Just my opinion.

One thing valuable about the MAke me Move price is you know what a house is NOT worth.

thanks for commenting, Liz.

Liz Provo

The problem I have always had with zillow and other online valuation tools is that it is very difficult to be accurate. In the northeastern part of the country,there are few cookie cutter homes. How can zillow place a market value on a 200 year old property with period details located in in a rural area? How about two family homes, or a single family with an in-law, or a condo in a community that caters to 55+ but has no age restriction?

The biggest difficulty we have with new advertisers who use our for sale by owner services helping them overcome the zestimate mentality. The only thing worse is if they've started out with a "Make Me Move" ridiculous price. Using public data that is often inaccurate does not compare to having a real live appraiser who is familiar with the local market.

I wonder how many lenders got into trouble using online valuations as a way to save money in the re-financing heyday?

John Lockwood

Holy cow. You mean the guys that show you an 1,800 square foot, 3 bedroom, single family home as a comp for a 840 square foot 2 bedroom condo don't even know what state they're in now?

Oh well, maybe Alabama is just a Zestimate of New York.

jfsellsius

Thanks for your comment FSBO. We agree that Zillow is great at marketing. Have you tried Property Shark? If you are interested in in-depth examination of public data, they offer much more than Zillow. The only difference is they do not interpret the data for you, they show it to you and let you decide.

2 questions, if you don't mind:

1. How have you found the zestimates to be useful
2. Would you support a homeowner's right to opt-out of the zestimate

Fsbo

I consider Zillow to be a very good Internet project. They help realtors and FSBO seller and buyers not only to search but to compare and so on… I believe that they invent all that new features not because they need to improve something in their business but because it’s a part of their marketing strategy. They add a new feature and the whole Internet start speaking about it – good idea as I see. And cost-effective!

jfsellsius

You know we do our Zillow pieces to bring David over :)
We really do like the G-man.

Merry Christmas Ardell (and Kim)

ARDELL

So I wandered over to Sellsius and saw a Zillow piece and said to myself YAY! I get to say Happy Holidays to three of my favorite guys: Joe, Rudy AND David G. Cause I knew when I saw 3 comments, that one of them would inevitably be David. As usual, you did not disappoint.

Merry Christmas!

jfsellsius

Bugs are inevitable. And I know how to find them youbetcha. Experience has taught us a lot about how real estate search works and how it ought to work. But Zillow, and virtually all others, have always had fuzzy search. And there is a reason for it, as Dave can tell you.
But here's Zillow's real problem-- reliance on user input. So long as you rely on users to type, Z will never create the "new standard" that makes for efficient search. Sorry.

Happy Holidays, David.

David G from Zillow.com

Hi Joe,

You have a bright future in software testing. Both are bugs. We are investigating and I'll be back with an update when I have more news.

We've actually had the neighborhoods on the site for quite a while. What's new is the fact that users can seamlessly move between searching for neighborhoods and for sale listings in the same search interface. To my knowledge, there's no other site that does that.

Happy holidays!