VentureBeat - Latest Comments in My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Andrew — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:59:59 -0000

Karim, I trust you plan to change your domain name at some point? The owners of MyCurrency.com are going to get major traffic from you :)

As for Zillow, I don't think "Make Me Move" prices are going to get people to stick around.

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Karim Tahawi — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 00:53:35 -0000

Karim here from My-Currency. Thanks very much for the thoughts and discussion.

A couple of quick thoughts: First, we are in an Alpha so many things are still being deployed and content seeded.

Second, our intention is not to replace the listings of brokers and agents but to point people to them. Our goal is to bring people together to aggregate distributed knowledge and create transparency on properties and neighborhoods while vetting professional expertise.

Third, our roll-out strategy is to gain adoption in San Francisco and then to add cities quickly thereafter - the Craigslist model.

Thanks and I look forward to more discussions. Feel free to contact me directly at http://www.my-currency.com/...

Cheers!

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Pirate Prentice — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:31:34 -0000

David, make sure you trademark "Zestimates" -it is has winner written all over it.

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Clarum — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:15:26 -0000

cute...but cmon, this needs to scale fast or will die just as fast...the bloom is off the residential real estate rose now...now sure this is much of anything!

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Rovingeconomist — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:32:29 -0000

... and My-Currency is far from an auction. At least you get to see the object you are bidding on at an auction - albeit in a catalog sometimes. On My-Currency, there are no pictures or detailed property info about the house. Valuing a house under these conditions is like asking someone to bid on my car, but I won't show you what it looks like, the mileage, repair history, etc - but tell me what you will pay for my GM - I'm asking $10,000.

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

Arkane — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:53:16 -0000

Homeless - "To me it doesnâ€™t necessarily indicate the true valuation of the home but rather what the market will bear." In fact, what the market will bear is exactly what determines the true value of a property! That's why auctions are often your best value indicator.

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

homeless — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:46:43 -0000

Interesting. I'm wonder will agents themsevles really necessarily want to contribute to this site. On one hand you'll have the selling agent want to valuate it at the high end to help the sellers out no? The buyer's agent could come back and work in the opposite direction to get the best deal for the buyer. Opposing forces. You may in fact have created an auction for the home in a sense with multiple buyers bidding down/up the home against what the seller initially listed it for. To me it doesn't necessarily indicate the true valuation of the home but rather what the market will bear. I can see homes that are for sale will generate this kind of crowdvalue but what about homes not for sale? Will there be enough people contributing to valuations of those homes? Who's in the best position to valuate the home? Agents perhaps? General public not 100% likely (maybe they'll get the valuation from Zillow anyway). And are there going to be enough agents with enough time to really generate the kind of crowd value that is truely representative and accurate?

Re: My Currency, lets “wisdom of the crowds” estimate real estate prices

David G from Zillow.com — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:42:11 -0000

Hi Matt, it's David from Zillow. A quick comment on ...

"After a user visits the site, what do they do then?"

FYI - we've added functionality to Zillow beyond valuations. Among other features, owners and agents can now post their homes for sale on the site. My favorite new feature is "Make Me Move", whereby home owners with no real plan to sell can test the market's interest in their house by posting a dream price that would literally "Make Me Move".

Valuations (Zestimates) are still a core part of the Zillow experience and one that we continue to fine-tune (just added 2M Zestimates) but there's a lot more to do on the site than merely viewing Zestimates -- including the ability for users to calculate their own estimates and publish those for other users to view.