Latest news with #Zestimate
Geek Wire
07-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Zillow co-founder Rich Barton on the ‘provocation marketing playbook' that can boost your brand
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Rich Barton. (Zillow Photo) Here's a marketing tip for companies on a tight budget: be provocative. That's the strategy Zillow used in its early days in Seattle, according to Rich Barton, the company's co-founder who joined the Tim Ferriss Show on a recent podcast. Barton previously co-founded Expedia, which spent heavily on marketing to drum up interest in the travel company's brand. But early Zillow investor Bill Gurley challenged the burgeoning Seattle startup to imagine if it didn't have any marketing budget. 'We were like, 'No way, you can't do that,'' Barton recalled. 'But that made us think a lot more creatively about the features that we built, the way we built them, and then the way we PR communicated them.' Zillow recognized that the data it was collecting on housing prices was valuable for newspapers and built a mechanism to 'constantly feed the endless appetite,' Barton noted. That was a big brand builder — with no ad money spent. 'When you have constantly changing data that people are interested in, you can almost think about feeding that data to hungry consumers in a Bloomberg-like way,' he said. The company then launched its now-famous 'Zestimate' home estimate tool in 2006 — which drew more than 1 million visitors within the first three days and crashed the site. 'When you have a really provocative feature that you know people are going to feel emotional about one way or the other and they're going to talk about it, you're on to something,' Barton said. Since then Barton said he has developed a playbook around what he calls 'provocation marketing.' 'I'm a big believer in the product being the most important part of the marketing mix, if that makes sense to you,' Barton said. Barton, who stepped down as Zillow's CEO last year, also pointed to Glassdoor, the review and salary database site he co-founded. 'We knew salaries [were] a little bit taboo for a lot of people — so it was inherently secret and provocative,' he said. Companies can do too much that may offend or turn off consumers — so there's a balance. You don't want to scare people or piss them off. 'If you're building a brand and a service, you want people to be provoked — but feel good, or tickled, or entertained,' Barton said. He added: 'Provocation marketing with a heart, with the end consumer's best interests in mind — that's a winner.' Barton and Ferris covered a number of other topics during their conversation, including the early days at Expedia, advice on hiring and firing, balancing family and professional life, and other leadership tips.
Daily Mail
17-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
How to make Zillow love your house: Real estate pros share the tricks to getting a sky-high Zestimate
For many Americans, checking their home's value on Zillow has become a digital-age ritual — part curiosity, part bragging rights. The Zestimate — available for homes both on and off the market — can carry serious weight. It is a powerful reference point for buyers, sellers, and nosy neighbors alike. So, for sellers navigating today's rocky real estate landscape, understanding the Zestimate — and knowing how to influence it — is vital. Zillow produces the home valuation tool for properties across the United States and Canada after crunching millions of data points to give you an up-to-date estimate. It's often very close to the listing price — but with the right information, sellers can get it even higher. Zillow's algorithm pulls from public records, recent sales, tax data, and user-submitted details. It factors in square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, location, and — when relevant — total days on the market to estimate a home's value. Zestimate gets within 20 percent of the actual sale price for more than 99 percent of listed homes in cities like Atlanta, San Diego and Cincinnati. What many homeowners don't realize: they can update their property's information on Zillow themselves — and in some cases, that can lead to a higher Zestimate. According to Zillow, 'the nationwide median error rate for the Zestimate for on-market homes is 2.4 percent, while the Zestimate for off-market homes has a median error rate of 7.49 percent.' When a homeowner makes a serious upgrade to a property, like a kitchen makeover or an additional bedroom, that may increase the value of the home, it's not always taken into consideration by Zillow. Those updates can only be reflected in the final figure if you report them to your local Homeowners should pay attention when selling, because Zillow can fail to recognize if a listing has been renovated or upgraded. In fact, there's a trick savvy sellers use value their homes at the highest price they can. The tool is only as accurate as the data it's fed. Homeowners can go into Zillow, and first, claim their home. Claiming your home on Zillow means confirming you're the homeowner. That gives you access to insights and tools to manage your property. One Zestimate valued a house in New Jersey at $40k over the home's listed value Using the owner dashboard, you can track your home's value, explore pricing options for a potential sale, and receive a home report email full of market trends, nearby listings, and recent sales. Homeowners can also control update home details and assess equity. Additions like a new kitchen, extra bathroom, or an inground pool and upgraded backyard can seriously raise the price of a home. By refreshing the data, the Zestimate adjusts, and it will add thousands to your estimated value. Zillow also has a home sale proceeds calculator. That tool will calculate the final profits after sellers pay fees like repairs, closing costs, and the realtor's fee. Zillow also offers its own directory of local estate agents, so when you're ready to sell, you can find a pro who knows your specific neighborhood — and how to get the highest price based on where you are located. The listing service Redfin also internally estimates the value of a home. Zillow is useful for homeowners to update home details and assess equity on the house Zillow will calculate the final profits after sellers pay fees like repairs and closing costs Chief Redfin economist Daryl Fairweather says the estimate quickly factors in more than 500 data points about the market, the neighborhood, and the home itself. Homeowners can't self-edit listings on the site but they can have Redfin adjust for any changes. 'Since it's an automated estimate, homeowners aren't able to manipulate their estimate without reaching out to our team,' Fairweather tells 'If and when homeowners do reach out and share more details with us about their home like major renovations, expansions, changes in condition, we incorporate that feedback, which helps make our estimates more accurate. 'Homeowners can also create their own owner estimate, which enables them to choose comparable homes that are most similar to their own.' Fairweather adds that it's important to keep in mind that there are many factors outside of a homeowner's control that can affect your home's value, including buyer demand and prices of neighboring homes. The Zestimate trick can be particularly useful for a home to stand out amid a surplus of listings in the impending Florida housing crash. Active listings are currently at a record high in Florida's metros, such as Miami-Dade, Cape Coral, North Port-Sarasota and Deltona-Daytona Beach. Florida is suffering from surging insurance costs and HOA fees following a rise in natural disasters and the Surfside building collapse in 2021. More frequent natural disasters in the state, such as hurricanes and flooding, have driven up insurance costs and led homeowners associations to raise fees in anticipation of repairs and mitigation needs. Many homeowners now face fees greater than their mortgage payments, sparking a wave of distressed sales across the state. Sellers have slashed prices by up to 40 percent with some units wiping almost half a million off their asking price.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Zillow's happy workforce: 93% of employees endorse the company, thanks to 3 key factors
employees overwhelmingly approve of the company, according to Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For ranking. Generous benefits, flexible remote work options, and a winning business strategy help drive morale at the real estate company. Real estate company Zillow Group, Inc. ranks 43 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list in 2025, and moved up the ranks year over year. According to our data partner Great Place to Work, an impressive 93% of Zillow employees endorse their workplace, compared to 57% at a typical company. What helps Zillow stand out? In addition to tech investments and growth, employees praise the benefits they are given as part of employment. They also cherish the opportunity to do their jobs remotely. "The benefits provided are excellent and better than any company I have ever worked for,' employees told Great Place to Work. 'We are given paid maternity leave and contributions towards our medical deductibles so we do not have to feel a burden when needing medical care.' Zillow also offers a flexible remote work arrangement to employees, a quality shared with 98% of the companies on Fortune's 2025 list. 'This company is fully remote, and we are able to have a healthy work-life balance and have the ability to move where we need to without being tied to an office,' employees say. Investing in an online headquarters versus emphasizing one physical location has helped the company recruit and retain talent. 'We like to think we hire adults. We like to treat people like adults,' Dan Spaulding, chief people officer at Zillow, tells Fortune, adding that he only goes into the office about 5 days out of every month. Seattle-based Zillow's care for its 6,730 employees has led to overwhelming trust in leadership, which pays dividends for the success of its business. Zillow has achieved an audience that far surpasses competitors in the space. Zillow reports an average monthly audience of 217 million users, more than double that of competitors and Redfin. Investing in proprietary tech and tools, most notably the price estimator Zestimate, help it differentiate in the competitive market of real estate. Zestimate was one of the company's first machine learning tools, Nicholas Stevens, Vice President of Product, Artificial Intelligence, at Zillow, said in an interview with Fortune reporter Jason del Rey. The tool has evolved to look beyond hard data, such as number of rooms and square footage, and factor in more complex elements like listing images and a 3D walkthrough. That's helped customers 'to get a deep sense of the quality of the home and the value of the home…that's really improved the accuracy of the Zestimate, Stevens said. The company has invested $4 billion over the past decade in a customer relationship management system, a virtual staging company, and a media software and content management platform. The strategy is paying off, giving Zillow a competitive advantage in the sector. 'We place Zillow as a kind of category winner who's been taking share and is essentially a ubiquitous, dominant brand within a category, which is residential real estate,' Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Bank, Nicholas Jones, said in an interview with Fortune. 'Competitively speaking, really, no one's near Zillow in terms of traffic volume, the leads they can generate.' Zillow's tech investments are doing more than driving growth in audience: working for a forward-thinking company with a thriving strategy also boosts staff morale and trust in leadership. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
