Terrific New Real Estate Research Tool

There is a great new web site dedicated to all things about real estate valuations and sales. Zillow.com is a nice new site (Feb 2006) that was launched by the people who founded Expedia.com. They are a well funded outfit ($32 million in funding) that offers tools that should assist anyone who is buying or selling a home. To top it off, it is just fun to use.

If you are in WNY, like me, you will notice that the values are not up to date. The WNY area uses tax assessment data instead of the home valuation Zestimate^TM. I expect that to change in the future.

Zillow offers:

• Value changes for each home, charted over the past year, five years or 10 years.
• Historical value changes for each home as compared to its surrounding zip code, city, state or the entire U.S.
• All comparable home sales in an area.
• Satellite, aerial and parcel views of many homes.
• Individual home data, such as number of bedrooms/bathrooms, square footage, lot size, stories and year built.

It is cool since much of this is based on a graphical map of your neighborhood. They employ some nice technology (like Google Maps) so that you can drag the map, and view the satellite imagery with a simple click. Explore the site, there is some great information that will help anyone who is buying or selling real estate.

With the people behind the company, I would expect many more tools in the future. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are under new ownership at this time next year. This would be a terrific addition for a major online player (Are you listening Yahoo-YHOO, Google-GOOG, IAC/InterActiveCorp-IACI, or News Corp-NWS?)