Zillow, Your Edge in Real Estate

I don't know how to react to this.

I have just discovered Zillow, the latest project from the people who created Expedia.

This is a blend of Google Maps with every tax assessor's database to produce an easy to browse view of home values. Zoom out and it shows aggregate prices by region. Zoom in and the regions get more precise. Zoom all the way in and get detailed estimates of the values of individual homes.

I'm not sure if any privacy lines have been crossed. Everything is based on public databases. The value they add is all in the accessibility and aggregation. And they appear to have resisted any temptation to include the (also public record) legal owner of the parcel in their reports.

They claim their estimates are within 10% of the actual selling price (by checking historical estimates against actual sales) 66% of the time for LA metro, and better than that nationally.

They also claim my home is worth 50% more than I thought it was....

Hmm.