Five years ago today, we flipped the switch and turned on the Zillow.com beta, announcing to the world that we had “free and instant valuations and data” for 60 million homes. It was an exciting moment for us, for sure — and one that temporarily crippled the site as nearly one million people checked us out in the first three days.
Five years, dozens of new products, and a heck of a real estate ride later, we celebrate our fifth birthday today and reflect on how we’ve evolved and grown. In addition to viewing Zestimate® home values and data on more than 100 million U.S. homes, you can also now search millions of homes for sale, homes for rent, or homes with a Make Me Move price. Touring a neighborhood? Try a Zillow Mobile app – 20,000 homes are viewed every hour via our #1-ranking real estate apps on iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile.
Buyers and sellers can now search for, and find, a local real estate agent in the Zillow Directory based on reviews and ratings from former clients. Or, ask a question of a real estate pro through Zillow Advice. And when it comes to shopping for a home loan or refinancing an existing loan, Zillow Mortgage Marketplace lets you shop anonymously for customized mortgage quotes, and track real-time mortgage rates.
In honor of our birthday, we’ve compiled some wacky, wonky, and just plain impressive stats about Zillow and, most importantly, the Zillow employees who make it all possible.
Zillow by the Numbers
- If you stacked all the 102 million homes on Zillow on top of each other, they would reach all the way to the moon — and 50% of the way back home (ii).
- The total value of all homes listed for sale on Zillow since launch ($16,270,455,136,904) is equivalent to the GDP of the entire European Union.
- The total amount of financing requested on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace since its launch in 2008 is $831,394,654,763 — enough to buy 4.7 million median-priced American homes.
- Homeowners and agents have added more than 52 million individual home photos to Zillow. That’s….a lot of photos!
Zillow Employee Factoids (i)
- We’re renters (44%) and homeowners (56%)
- Public transportation is the Zillow way — 71% of Zillow employees commute to work via bus or train.
- Half of Zillow employees admit to playing Ping-Pong at work (it’s ok — it’s encouraged!)
- Food is important to us. More than 2,700 sub sandwiches were consumed by Zillowites at company meetings in 2010.
- We’re not afraid of heights. A Zillow employee in the Seattle office travels 500,918 feet vertically per year, riding up and down the elevator up to the 46th floor of the Wells Fargo Building in Seattle.
Lastly, to properly say thank you to you — the more than 15 million users who come to Zillow each month — we’re going to do a little sweepstakes giveaway. Everyone who enters the Zillow Birthday Sweepstakes on Facebook or Twitter is eligible to win a $500 Amazon gift card. Existing fans/followers are eligible too!
(ii) The average distance to the moon from earth is 238,000 miles. Assuming that the average home on Zillow has 1.47 stories, at 12 feet per story, we determined that the stacked height of all homes on Zillow would equal 344,000 miles.
(i)- Employee survey conducted using Survey Monkey on January 28, 2011