Six months ago today, Zillow launched the beta site with great… uhh… fanfare… and some interest that frankly overwhelmed us.
Once we got stable, we began to be amazed at the insatiable consumer appetite for data and valuation information on homes. And with data in mind, we went rummaging for stats on how far we’ve come in the past half-year. Here’s Zillow at six months by the numbers:
Home data
- Since Zillow’s launch, 22.8 million different homes have been searched, or just over a third of our database.
- However people are clearly a little more Zillow-crazy in some areas than others. In Hillsborough, CA and Atherton, CA, both areas south of San Francisco, nearly 95% of area homes in Zillow’s database have been searched! Other Zillow-saturated areas: San Marino, CA: 94.8%, Weston, MA: 92.2%, Palos Verdes Estates, CA and Wellesley, MA: 91.9%. Kind of an East Coast-West Coast thing.
- Meanwhile our database of homes has increased from about 62 million at launch to today’s total of 67,370,565. Up about 600,000 since our last update in June.
- And our coverage of homes with Bird’s Eye Views has increased as well since the launch of this feature in April. New areas of coverage for these aerial photographs of homes include most of Denver and Boulder, CO; Fort Worth, TX and Trenton, NJ.
Guilty pleasures
- We were pleased to learn that our intended audience of homeowners, buyers and sellers is indeed coming to the site. But we also realized that people like to have a little fun, so a few months ago we created a page of famous TV homes.
- Which of these homes is most popular? Hugh Hefner’s house — with nearly 189,000 page views to date. This is followed by the Beverly Hillbillies mansion, with 159,000 page views, and the loveable stuck-in-the-70’s Brady Bunch home, with 130,000 page views.
Zestimates on the go
- More recently, we introduced a new Zillow Labs project called ZMobile, where you can get a Zestimate on the go from your mobile phone or blackberry. Since first adding info on this to our site a few weeks ago, we’ve averaged about 170 mobile inquires a day.
Frankly, we can’t believe it’s only been six months. But like any new business, we’ve still got work to do — data to add, Zestimates to improve and new products and features to launch. We’ve also got about 25 new openings to fill. Stay with us — it’s going to be an exciting first year.