Today Zillow is thrilled to announce a significant upgrade to our site, which increases the number of homes with Zestimate valuations to 67 million homes in the U.S., a 68 percent increase from when we launched in beta in 2006. In addition, the total number of homes with information on Zillow rises from 70 to 80 million, or about 90% of all homes in the country. Some of our newest areas with Zestimates include the states of Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky and Louisiana among others.
Not only are our Zestimates more widespread, but they’re also now more accurate… 12% better across the board, in fact. How did we do this? We made our Zestimate models hyper-local, adding over 20x more models nationwide and we built smarter logic to decide which models to use on which house. So whether you’re looking for a home in Birmingham or the Hollywood Hills, your home’s Zestimate is now calculated based the combination of models that works best for your area and home type. The new algorithm also takes into account owner- and agent-edited facts that have been made by our community of users. As you can imagine, when public records have inaccurate information – such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage – this can impact the value accuracy of that home. Now owners and agents – who have the most intimate knowledge of homes – can actively contribute to our database and Zestimate accuracy.
It feels like just yesterdaywe first launched Zillow with data on 60 million homes and Zestimates on 40 million. We’ve come a long way since then, opening up the site to community input, expanding our advertising business and partnering with brokerages, industry professionals and hundreds of newspapers. (In fact, just yesterday we added two more great partners to our Listings Feeds program).
We’ve learned a great deal along the way and will continue to do so, but the time is right to come out of beta. But this doesn’t mean we’re done by any means…you can expect us to continue to find innovative ways of serving the consumer and helping real estate professionals market themselves.
Keep an eye out for more exciting releases and products later this year that take Zillow into new areas. In the meantime, take our new algorithm for test drive on your home – or the homes of your friends and family, if you like. If you want to see how your region stacks up for accuracy, visit our data and accuracy pages that break down our accuracy by market down to the county level. You’ll quickly see in some places we’re great and in others we can still get better, which we are always working toward. What you’ll also see is a great deal of transparency – that is our fundamental commitment to you. And, for those who have a bit more interest in the math and science behind our improvement, watch for an upcoming post by Stan.