Ubertor Real Estate Blog

more about Google Adwords, Zillow EZ Ads and closing online leads. The team over at Reachd.com has added 2 unique training bootcamps to their successful educational lineup.

March 11th 2008 - Sales guru Shane Gibson and Reachd’s Rodney Bartlett will be leading a unique 1 day training event that will teach you how to generate leads online as well as close them using Shane Gibson’s proven methods. Complete details and registration details can be found here.

April 17th 2008 - Seattle based Zillow.com is hosting a unique Reachd Google Adwords Bootcamp that will run in their beautiful downtown Seattle offices. Space is limited to 20 agents so be sure to register soon. Agents will be taught how the Google Adwords system works, as well as learn from Zillow’s DavidG about their EZ Ads system. Complete details and registration details can be found here.

Now you can have your listings show up on the Zillow.com website! We have just added the functionality for you to have your listings showcased on Zillow.com quickly and easily. All you have to do is follow the instructions in this knowledgebase article.

Now your listings can go to Zillow.com and Trulia.com. All you need to do is take a minute to register with both websites and your on your way. Learn how to deal with Trulia here.

From VentureBeat:

Zillow, the controversial website that gives value estimates of people’s homes and other real estate info, has raised a significant $30 million of funding, despite the mortgage industry credit crunch.

The Seattle company has now raised a hefty $87 million in total funding during its short lifetime, making it one of the most richly backed of the new era of “Web 2.0″ Internet companies.

The round was led by Legg Mason Capital Management. Previous backers Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and PAR Capital all participated.

Opened in early 2005 by the founders of Expedia, Zillow started out as a portal for information about homes around the country. Over time, it has added on sales components for owners and real estate agents, and also provides a place for buyers to discuss or ask questions about a property.

Only last month, we reported that competitor site Redfin had landed $12 million in funding, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Trulia, the other main player in the Web 2.0 real estate space, pulled in $10 million in May. Terabitz, started by a teenager, raised $10 million in July (our coverage).

Asked whether this most recent funding round has anything to do with the real estate slowdown, chief financial officer Spencer Rascoff told me that there was no relation. Rather, it had to do with the company’s focus on employing plenty of skilled developers and improving the site.

More here and here

Zillow.com has launched a new blog with 7 contributors from outside of Zillow. Drew Meyers from Zillow emailed me a little while ago asking me to be one of the regular contributors. From their site “the goal of this blog is to bring together real estate professionals and tech enthusiasts who are interested in learning how technology can increase their business. Are you a geeky real estate fanatic, or interested in becoming one? Please make yourself at home here and add us to your feed reader.”

Check it out. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Here is my first post.

When I was at Zillow the other day I ask David Gibbons the Director of Community Relations for Zillow about their expansion to Canada, Europe or Australia. He said that while they can’t discuss their expansion plans at this time he did say that they are going to be doing work outside of the US. I saw this video on InmanTV interviewing DavidG and he does discuss what is coming up next for Zillow. Check it out:

Confused? (here are some links if you need some help - Ubertor.com, Sellsius, Zillow.com and Redfin.com)

Well, yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with the legendary real estate blogger Ardell in Seattle. Myself and Ian Watt of Century 21 drove down to Seattle to meet up with Ardell and Rudy and Joe from Sellsius. The Sellsius guys are on the last leg of a cross country RV tour meeting with real estate bloggers and agents that started in New York. The plan is to finish in San Francisco in time for the Inman Connect Conference.

A few Seattle real estate bloggers joined up with Ardell and crew and we went into downtown Seattle to meetup with Zillow.com and Redfin.com.

Zillow.com was outstanding. I have had the opportunity to check out the office before but this time we were treated to a tour of their offices so that we could get a feel for what goes on at Zillow.com. It was really great to finally meet Drew and DavidG who are the social networking face to Zillow. For those that don’t know Zillow.com is an online real estate service dedicated to helping you get an edge in real estate by providing you with valuable tools and information.

Next we went over to Redfin.com the industry’s first online brokerage for residential real estate. Redfin was interesting. A very different office environment compared to Zillow. It was more of a startup feel with agents and marketing people running all over. We were given a quick tour from Glenn Kelman the President & CEO of Redfin around the office. It was great to be there.

All in all we had a great day.

Here are some pictures from the day:

(L - R) - Drew Meyers, Rhonda Porter, myself, (forgot her name, sorry) and David Gibbons

Some Redfin.com for sales signs

(L - R) - Ian Watt, Glenn Kelman, President & CEO of Redfin, and myself

Ian Watt in front of the Sellsius Real Estate RV

(L - R) - Rudy of Sellsius, myself and Joe of Sellsius

Zillow.com is making some big changes to their system. Here are the 3 main points:

* Owners or listing agents for any of the 67 million homes in Zillow’s database will be able to list those homes for sale at no cost.

* Owners of any Zestimable homes will be able to post a “Make Me Move” price on their homes, the price at which all objections to selling will have been overcome.

* Zillow is creating a real estate wiki to serve as a sort of Wikipedia.org-like encyclopedia of real estate.

Instead of trying to summarize what is changing at Zillow.com, I’ll just send you over to BloodHoundRealty and TechCrunch.com as they have both done a great job explaining the changes to Zillow.

Over the last few week or so, Zillow has been getting hammered in the media with regard to their “Zestimates”. Joel Burslem and Greg Swann have been covering the story, but I figured I would post some of the links to the major news sources that are writing about Zillow.

New York Times - A Home Valuation Web Site Is Accused of Discrimination
San Jose Business Journal - Zillow.com accused of helping predatory lenders
Seattle PI - Zillow.com accused of discrimination in home valuations
Contra Coast Times - FTC complaint filed against Zillow
Red Herring - Zillow Faces Minority Complaint

Related News:
Zillow competitor launches - eppraisal.com

I just got back from our Inaugural Vancouver Real Estate Professional Meetup that we held at Diner in Yaletown. It was a great success as we had over 30 agents show up.

A big thanks to Heather from Diner who opened her restaurant on an otherwise closed night to host our Meetup. Not only did she graciously open her door to our group but she unexpectedly fired up the kitchen and put out some hors d’oeuvres. Be sure to pop by Diner next time you are in Yaletown for lunch or dinner.

The format was a little loose as this was the initial meetup and we wanted to go with the flow a bit to see how things went. At about 7:00pm we took control of the group to do a little presentation on HouseValues.com, Zillow.com, Trulia.com as well as touched on JohnLScott.com. The theme was about the direction the internet is going and how information is being opened up and let loose. Locking down, login required and password protection are all old school thinking. Providing information to your users is key. The real key is providing value to your users. The real estate listings (ie the data) is not the value.

All Realtors can provide the data, the real key is providing value.
Value = Education, Experience, Opinion, Feedback, Knowledge etc.

I have already received some great feedback about this Meetup… he is what a few agents had to say:

“Thanks for going the extra mile to provide some ‘value added service’ with your social this evening. It is great to know that you are on top of web based marketing and keep us realtor informed! ” - Joel Carcone - www.livinglonsdale.com

“I just wanted to say thank you for spending some time to speak with me tonight regarding our website and where the internet is going. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the talk you gave at the “Diner”, it was very informative. ” - Diane Cardoso - www.ownanicehome.com

“Ubertor shines again - this company is very pro-active in bringing the newest technology and info as to what is happening in the web world. Great company, great job. Attending was definitely worthwhile.” - Helga Lauckner - www.helgalauckner.com

“Amazing!! Lots of people for networking, and the presentation is fantastic!! I really enjoy the whole experience. Michael Stephenson and Stephen Jagger are true genius. Their event are enlighting! Some top realtors even credit their success to these 2 genious! WOW!!” - Ian Sullivan - www.yaletownpropertyguy.com

Interested to attend our next Meetup? We have already set it up for next Monday. Please RSVP here if you would like to attend.

Mike Stephenson and I were at the Vancouver Enterprise 2.0 Forum tonight where we chatted with a few entrepreneurs and listened to a few speakers.

The speaker from DabbleDB.com got up to speak and did a tour of their database software. Why I thought this might be interesting to our readers is that there was a small real estate related inclusion in his presentation. Andrew from DabbleDB.com did his demo showcasing how his database software could potentially help a seminar organizer track the speakers that were coming to the seminar; their hourly rates, the currency in which they were paid, the company they were from etc. The part I found interesting was near the end, he mentioned that you could take the database of speakers that were coming to your conference and add in the Zillow Zestimates from their homes to see an idea of their net worth.

Is Zillow mainstream?
Does a Zestimate become the house evaluation if enough people think it is correct?