Friday, February 10, 2006

Don't Look at This Unless You Have a Lot of Free Time

There's a fascinating and enthralling new webiste, zillow.com, that let's you see the values of homes.
It either gives you the assessed value of a home (which in this market is way less that its market value) or a "Zestimate" of the home's value (these seem to be a little on the high side).
They take all known data (sale price, lot size, number of rooms, sale prices of other homes in the neighborhood) and compile it into a formula to come up with a result.
It's fun to type in people's addresses to see what their homes are worth. If you grew up on Staten Island, you should definitely check out the address of everyone's parents' homes. One in particular is very interesting. Hint: it has a pool.
Enjoy.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is Jeremy's address in SI?

Scott said...

This site is bullshit. Not only does it have the square footage wrong, it only reminds me of how much we overpaid.

Paul said...

This site is not bullshit. If it has the square footage wrong its because public records were not filed accurately. The estimates are quite capricious but they are interesting. Remember, there are two different numbers, the assessed value and the Zestimate. The assessed value is nowhere near accurate, the Zestimate should be close.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't look like it's bullshit, but it seems like there are some blatant mistakes. There's no way my dad's friend Phil's house is smaller than my parents, nor is it worth about the same, as the site indicates; Paul, Jason I believe you guys have been there and should know this.

Paul said...

Depends on whether Phil's hot daughters and their vodka are included. Let me reiterate, the site is interesting, provides some information but is not to be trusted for buying and selling. It's simply an aggregation of public records. Also the site is in its first week of operation, perhaps some of this information will be updated and corrected over time.

Ton said...

The best part of the site is that it shows sale prices of houses in the area, so you can get an actual, real world average for your hood

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, Phil's daughters are married now, and he supposedly doesn't even drink anymore (doctor's orders).

Anonymous said...

Actually reissberg is wrong, Phils house in smaller. I know this because his daughter Jaime told me so in the middle of giving me a blow job when I went to use the bathroom because I drank too much OJ at brunch. However, she was all fucked up on alcohol from the Vodka she was allegedly cooking with.