What is Zillow? Zillow Review

1. Introduction

Zillow is an American real estate information query website founded in 2006. It mainly provides free real estate valuation services to Internet users. Users can directly zoom in and out on the satellite map to find the target on the web page, or search using postal codes and streets.

House buyers will use Zillow to compare the value of houses and buy their favorite houses at the most reasonable price to avoid wasting money. House sellers will use Zillow to get the valuation of real estate so that they can sell their houses at the highest and most appropriate price.

Zillow

Market Positioning: Real Estate Search

Company headquarters and website: Seattle, Washington

To date, the company has received $87 million in venture capital.

I did the following analysis on the Zillow website.

2. Analysis from the content

Zillow is a website that provides free real estate valuation services, but it is not a real estate agency. Instead, it is more like a professional appraisal company that provides professional "real estate appraisal services." Zillow's services are not only free, but users do not need to install any software. After connecting to Zillow's website, you can directly zoom in and out on the satellite map to find the target, or use the zip code and street to search. Zillow has obtained the use of MLS (Multiple Listing System, a public buying and selling database for real estate agencies) in many parts of the United States, and then developed a "Zestimate" computer system to estimate the current market price of real estate based on the historical transaction prices in each MLS database.

3. Analysis from the perspective of community

Since Zillow is a website that provides free real estate valuation services, its customer base must be people who are related to real estate, such as buyers and sellers of houses, and people who are interested in the value of real estate. House buyers will use Zillow to compare the value of houses and buy their favorite houses at the most reasonable price to avoid wasting money. House sellers will use Zillow to compare the value of houses and buy their favorite houses at the most reasonable price to avoid wasting money.

The appraisal enables you to get an appraisal of your real estate and sell your house at the highest and most appropriate price. Real estate owners use Zillow appraisals to pay attention to the appreciation potential of their real estate and the value of existing real estate.

4. Analysis from the perspective of Communication

In the traditional real estate agency industry, many people are unable to understand the actual value of the real estate they own or buy and sell. Zillow's philosophy is to return power to the public, so that everyone can know how much their real estate or the real estate they want to buy is worth. Zillow's open information challenges the traditional real estate agency industry. Although Zillow only plays the role of an information provider, it does not seem to have a big impact on the current real estate industry.

But "information" is actually the core value of the real estate industry. When customers do not understand the value of their real estate, real estate agents can extract a lot of commissions from it. However, after the emergence of companies like Zillow, traditional real estate agents must rethink the additional value they can provide.

Zillow's new bird's eye view image can view the three-dimensional image of the house from four directions, namely, east, south, west and north, so that users can more intuitively understand the situation around the house. GlobeXplorer is the provider of ZillowMAP data. I just think that ZillowMAP and GOOGLE's MAP seem to be similar. But that's right, can the earth taken from a satellite be different? After all, there is only one earth, haha.

5. Analysis from the perspective of Commerce

Among all the real estate agency websites, some websites are only responsible for introducing customers to traditional operators, and the Internet companies charge a certain percentage of commission from the operators; some websites provide transaction rewards to attract buyers to use their services. In contrast, Zillow only focuses on valuation and does not provide information on real estate transactions. Zillow does not intend to be an intermediary, but only provides free query services. Like ordinary Internet companies, it hopes to make profits from advertising.

Zillow will launch a pay-per-click advertising model. When customers use the Zestimate system, ads will appear on the web page from time to time. If users click on them, Zillow can collect advertising fees. Zillow avoids direct competition with real estate agents and hopes that real estate agents will become its advertisers, using Zillow as a marketing tool and making real estate agents a source of profit for Zillow.

Zillow's unique positioning and strategy have attracted great attention from all walks of life. Currently, many businesses have expressed their willingness to place advertisements, and even websites similar to Zillow are very interested. I believe that the placement of advertisements will definitely bring Zillow a considerable amount of income.

At present, there is no website like Zillow that provides free real estate valuation services in China's real estate network. Faced with the high housing prices in cities and serious speculation in the real estate market, people cannot buy houses at a reasonable price. In addition, domestic real estate appraisal agencies charge high fees and information is not circulated.

Currently, we can only see the transaction price of houses but not the appraisal price. Most people do not know the appraisal of real estate at all. Websites like Zillow solve this problem. If China also has such websites that provide free real estate appraisal services, I think the real estate bubble will also be reduced.

5. Rentals

Zillow has focused its efforts in the rental property market on a new avenue - launching the Android version of its professional real estate management app, Zillow Rentals.

Zillow Rentals is an important means for Zillow to expand its market and is highly anticipated. According to the website traffic, 40% of the traffic over the weekend, more than 320,000 people, came from mobile devices, which has accounted for a large part of Zillow's business. The overall statistics for March show that 155 million people visited Zillow through mobile devices, which means that 57 people visited every second.

Jeremy Wacksman, the company's vice president of marketing, explained the launch of Zillow Rentals, saying, "Although there have been some ways to log in to Zillow on mobile devices before, they are not as professional as Zillow Rentals. The new Android app will provide faster information updates and a more streamlined user experience."

As for the Android version being launched instead of iOS, Wacksman believes that the reason for this choice is mainly due to the trust of Android users, who are often younger and are willing to accept new things. However, this does not mean that Zillow Rentals will give up other platforms. In the future, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone versions will be launched one after another.

Several important factors that predict the success of Zillow Rentals are that it will be a unique app. The app will allow users to compare listings side by side and narrow their search geographically. It will provide user preferences and contact with owners. In addition, Zillow Rentals will add a financial statement display bar that provides compiled listing data, estimated prices and renovation information in addition to prices.

Wacksman stressed that Zillow is active in the U.S. rental market with "huge" business growth. Before further expanding into international markets, it will focus on maintaining the development of the U.S. domestic market, which is also Zillow's local business model. In addition, Zillow has signed cooperation agreements with 180 media including Yahoo.