The intention of Zillow is to offer “zillions” of datapoints and a “pillow” to rest your head on. Got it – Zill-ow?  Meanwhile they have 70 million homes listed and more than 4 million visitors a month. 

The founding team around Richard Barton and Lloyd Frink (they already made Expedia big) is also quite successful in raising “zillions” of dollars in funding:  They just recently finished their “series C” of funding raking in another 30 million USD which leaves them with a total of 87 million in funding – that’s what I call a comfortable cushion. They are using the money to expand their employee base and to develop cool features such as the aerial “birds-eye” views of the homes listed.  They also plan to expand their community features further.

So far users can edit their home records, join in the discussion that’s going on and put a price tag on their homes: The “make me move” feature allows them to set the price at which they are willing to sell their home. Interested buyers can contact them via e-mail – maybe a nice chance if you are looking for your dream house and are willing to pay a price premium.

Zillow is a media site – its business model is selling ads, not houses. So listing a house is for free, even for professional real estate agents. I wonder if this business model will work out – their advertising business must grow at a considerable rate if they want to make profit sometime soon. Let’s keep an eye on them and see whether they can make money by just selling ads in the future. Their current traffic rank is 370 in the US

Zillow critics voice that the zestimate lacks accuracy, allegedly its valuations are within 10% of the actual market value less than one third of the time.

Zillow is a fun tool to use and a nice starting point if you consider buying or selling a house. So far, it does not replace a good real estate agent, but it sure makes a formerly obscure market a bit more transparent.