I’ll be honest. Zillow freaks me out.On the one hand, if you want to get a bird’s-eye view of the homes where some of your favorite TV shows were shot, surfing over to Zillow and clicking on “famous homes,” will show you aerial images of the “homes” the Bradys lived in, the apartment building where Monica and Chandler lived, and the locations of dozens of other big and small-screen homes.
On the other hand, Zillow was created by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink to equip homeowners with an “online real estate service dedicated to helping them get an edge in real estate by providing you with valuable tools and information.” Those “tools” include allowing anyone with Internet access privy to the value, and exact location, of your home. That’s the freaky part.
The concept is great. Combine real estate industry MLS service information with satellite-mapping technology. Inputting your, or your neighbor’s, address results in a bird’s (or should I say satellite’s) eye view of your neighborhood complete with the assessed value of each home. Stalkers, are you readin’ me?
That’s why the execution is less than perfect. Zillow’s makers gather their information from public records; however, that doesn’t mean all homeowners want other folks to have one-click access to this much information. So can you remove your home info from Zillow? No. And here is their rationale:
“We use detailed information–most of it public– on as many homes in the U.S. as possible to calculate home Zestimates and to enable you to create your own estimates of market value. If we allowed deletions to our database, we would not be able to provide these services to help you make smarter real estate decisions.”
Uh huh. Can you spell lawsuit?
Ultimately, Zillow could be a useful tool with some modifications. Given that it serioiusly infringes upons some privacy matters, it gets a .com Dish! site surfin’ rating of “M” for mature. There is much room for great abuse on this site by immature parties.
