A Real Estate Discussion Blog

I had the privilege of attending RainCamp New York in January.  It was a room full of people where you could actually feel the energy in the air.  At breaks people were literally buzzing with information they'd just learned.  This is on top of the awesome networking opportunity to meet fellow Rainers. 

Because we were so impressed with the event, Zillow wanted to be involved in a bigger way.  I am happy to announce that we will be a sponsor at the Dallas event.  (I am unhappy to say that I won't personally be there, but we'll send someone else you'll be sure to love and I am going to do my best to be at the next one). 

What I learned at the New York Camp to get you ready for the Dallas Camp:

1) Bring your lap top and get a seat up front.  There are tables and power outlets to ensure that you'll be juiced the whole day.  There will be wireless access available, so you can surf with the Speaker.  I think this greatly enhances one's ability to digest what is being said when you can play along.

2) Bring lots of business cards.  I think it would cool to have cards specially made for the event with the same picture on them that is on your Active Rain profile and an URL for your blog with your blog title.  You may know someone very well online, and this would help make the connection IRL (in real life). 

3) Get signed up with Internet services ahead of time.  Even if you don't know (YET) how to use them, you want to at least set them up, so you'll be ready to go when the speakers start talking about them day of.  Start with: Twitter, Facebook, ActiveRain, Zillow, LinkedIn. 

4) Twitter - I know a lot of you don't get Twitter - or don't want to.  But do at least do this - I think it'll help Twitter click for you and will enhance your enjoyment of Raincamp.  Get your account set up at Twitter.com.  Download TweetDeck (free).  In the left upper corner, click the magnify glass to open a Search box.  In this box type #raincamp and enter.  This will launch a column where you can monitor what people are saying throughout the day.   You can even check this out before the show, to start meeting people pre-event.  (If you don't want to download Tweetdeck, go to search.twitter.com and enter #raincamp.)

Have fun at the Dallas event!  If you can't make it, I'd at least encourage you to follow the #raincamp tag on Twitter, so you'll be in the know when Raincamp makes it to your town!

I often get asked, does Zillow account for Foreclosures when calculating a Zestimate?  Short answer: no. 

However the long answer is very interesting.  Recently Zillow released a white paper where we looked at the question of if Foreclosures constituted a distinctly separate market from non-Foreclosures.  This paper was born from this debate where some thought there were so many Foreclosures that they were the market; while other argued that Foreclosures have characteristics that caused them to sell lower than at market value. 

The white paper itself goes into a high level of detail about methodology and data points used, but I'll skip to the results here.  Our data found that the answer to this question is YES, they are distinct markets. 

Of course, real estate is local so the numbers vary across local metros, but the trends held relatively the same. 

• Nationally the average ratio of Foreclosure prices to market value is 72%.  This is against the assumption that non-Foreclosures sell at market value, or 100%. 
• It appears that more Foreclosures in an area do lead to a smaller gap between Foreclosures and non-Foreclosures.  However, there is rarely less than a 20% discount for Foreclosures.

Based on the data, it indeed did find that Foreclosures sell for substantially less than non-Foreclosures, meaning that you can't compare two like houses when one is in Foreclosure and the other is not.  Two conclusions were drawn at the end of the study.  

1) The difference in these two markets is the reason why we can't include Foreclosures in our Zestimate calculations. We also don't use them in factoring our Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), or the trend information you find on the Local Info tab of the site.  Interestingly, this is a key reason why our ZHVI is currently down 21% from its peak compared to Case-Shiller Home Price Index (which does include Foreclosures) which is down more than 30% from its peak.

2) These findings show that it is inappropriate to include Foreclosure sales data when appraising non-Foreclosure homes.  Adjusting for the condition of recent Foreclosures, as well as the Seller's motivation in the Foreclosure situation, sounds great in theory but is ultimately complex in practice.  Especially given the Appraiser has likely not been inside the homes being used as comparables for the subject home.

Download the full report  - Price Differences Between Foreclosures and non-Foreclosures

Video recap with Dr Stan Humphries, Zillow's Chief Economist

I love reading Dan Zarrella's blog where he uses data from 60,000+ Twitter accounts to report on trends. 

Today's revelation: "Accounts that have more followers do not tend to talk about themselves much."

While interesting because it has data to support this claim, I couldn't help but think - doesn't that apply in the real world too?  How many people are attracted to those who opine on and on about themselves? 

Once again, another example about how 'in person' actions that give you desired outcomes are examples of how you should act in the social media world as well. 

Zillow's Chief Economist, Dr. Stan Humphries, has called foreclosures and non-foreclosures two distinct markets - a comment that set off some debate in a previous blog post.

That debate prompted us to delve further into the issue, and today Zillow released a white paper called "Price Differences Between Foreclosures and Non-Foreclosures." It turns out that, in most markets, foreclosures and non-foreclosures do indeed constitute two distinct markets, with previously foreclosed homes regularly fetching much lower prices than non-foreclosed homes with similar attributes.

Here is the full paper:

I just got off the phone with a woman who couldn't figure out how to take a property she had sold off of Zillow.  So I thought I'd do a quick video on the subject in case anyone else was having a similar problem. 

So that is how you remove your own listings. One thing I should have added to the video is, if you ever see a property, that may not be yours, still online when it should not be - flag it!  There is are light gray flags all over the site.  Click this and describe the issue.  Doing so triggers an email to our Customer Service team. 

I have two rental properties in Florida.  Needless to say, it has been a tough 3 years for us.  One property is furnished and can be rented short term.  In 2009 it had the absolute worst rental history.  There were months when it wasn't even rented for a single night, which had never happened in the 6 years I've owned it. 

In December Zillow announced that we were adding Rentals to the site.  I figured I could give up 3 days of Starbucks in exchange for paying $9.95 to advertise the property on the site for 6 months.  On January 3^rd, I added the Rental Unit to the site.  I am happy (and SO relieved) to say that I just got a call from my property management company, and I now have a Renter in the unit through May 17^th.  I have never had someone rent the unit for that long of a term.  

Thank you Zillow! 

Because the Rental search on the site is so new, Rentals aren't something that we are known for yet.  However, the I think the landlords who are getting on the site now are benefitting from being some of the first few listings.  If you do a search for Rentals in Ft Walton Beach, FL, where my unit is located, mine is the only one that shows up. 

Warning, shameless property plug coming...

If you ever vacation in the Ft. Walton Beach/Destin area and want a waterfront, affordable place to stay that has a pool, Internet, and kitchenette- please consider my furnished vacation rental unit. 

1000Watt Consulting has put together a guide to real estate technology companies.  The guide contains 350 links, broken down into 30 categories.  Company categories are broken down into sections like: marketing, IDX solutions, listing syndication, analytics, mobile applications and more.  The company plans to continually update the list, and there is a link to contribute new content.

Link to the 1000Watt Index

"It's to help you find vendors, competitors, partners and/or just plain-old cool stuff ... Think of it as a 30,000-foot view of all things geeky in real estate," Burslem said in a blog post about the guide's release.

I love the technology that allows the user to rearrange the page to their liking.  (would be a cool on an Agent or Broker website....)

Very cool!  Thanks 1000Watt! Definitely a great page to Bookmark!

One of the big reasons social media is so powerful is the potential for what you create to go viral.  An example of this power is when these artists had a bad experience on United Airlines, wrote a funny song about it and now has been viewed 7,403,573 times on YouTube, in 6 months. 

On a much smaller, but potentially more relevant scale - think about your Tweets.  Often Twitter is used to broadcast information.  Ideally all of your followers see this message, and ReTweet (RT) it to their followers, and then their followers RT it and so on - creating a viral marketing effect.

On Twitter, you are allowed 140 characters to broadcast your point.  Let's say I wanted to be RTed.  My Twitter handle is @sbonert (8 characters) and the RT in the retweet is 2 charectors, plus a space.  So for someone to simply hit the RT button and rebraodcast my message as is - I need to allow for 11 characters, or my message can be a maximum of 129 characters (140 - 11- 2 -1 = 129).  If it is any longer than that, it demands that the RTer edit my main message which requires work, and could be a barrier to being RTed.  Furthermore, if you wanted it to be RTed a second time, you need to consider room for the third Twitter handle as well. 

Here is example of what something getting RTed twice would look like, so you can see these extra characters in action:

RT @mikesimonsen: RT @rachnicole: @sbonert I always had a hard time w/some of the boundary lines. Wicker Park vs. Bucktown?

You can see how the extra handles and RT charecters can add up and eat into your alloted 140. 

Moral of the story: If you are hoping something gets ReTweeted - Try to keep the Tweet under 120 characters.  Make it easy for people to spread your love.

Google Ranks Real-Time Tweets Based On Followers?

Over the last couple of months there have been many announcements that social media (ie Tweets) will start working their way into search results.  There haven't been a lot of details on how exactly this is going to happen, but if you were still looking for that one more reason to get on Twitter, this could be it. 

Last week Technology Review magazine interviewed Amit Singhal, who leads development of Google's real-time search, on the topic.  The article is titled, How Google Ranks Tweets.

Here are some interesting excerpts:

"..in the social context, the number of people following someone is similar to the number of links pointing to a page. We know Google ranks web pages on the number and quality of those links (amongst other factors). It is not just about the number of Twitter followers, but also figuring out who the "reputed followers" are. You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone-then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers, it is equated to a popularity contest."

"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation.  As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."

"Google uses a 'signal in the noise' methodology to figure out if and when to show these results. He also explained how hashtags in Twitter might be a signal of a lower quality tweet. Hashtags could serve as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content."

This is really interesting information.  It reinforces the message that Social Media instructors always try to teach, that isn't all about the number of followers you have, but the quality of those followers. And to get quality followers, in comes back to content, and tweeting quality information.  

One way to gauge how well you are doing this could be to check in with the site www.Klout.com which looks at your followers, the information you are sending out, and how well you engage with your follower base.  

This will be an interesting topic to continue watching.  But at the end of the day, I think the main strategy should be similar to blogging.  There are some slight things you can do to improve the search engine ranking of your blog posts.  But at the end of the day your content is for your readers and the decisions you make on what to write should be for them.  When you start writing to gain systems, you risk losing your voice and style and potentials readers.  Blog and Tweet what you are passionate about.  You readers will benefit, and eventually that will work its way to Google.    

Nicole Borsey, of the The Property Network, got two listings from answering questions on Zillow Advice about REOs/Short Sales in her area of Stamford, CT.

Learn more about Nicole at www.nicolehelps.com or visit her Active Rain profile.

Or you can watch this video to learn more about Zillow Advice and how you can subscribe to learn when people ask questions in your area.