Zillow Real Estate Application Not Ready for Prime Time
Zillow, a real estate website famous for creating media fanfare and buzz, just made a big announcement about its real estate application for iPhone user’s. From what we hear on the street, home shoppers shouldn’t buy into the hype. User’s in even tech laden San Francisco report that the application is buggy, frustrating, and is so slow, it would test the patience of Job, (or should we say Jobs) himself.
What we’ve Heard on the Street about Using the Zillow App for Real Estate.
-
Hours of tinkering with your smart phone are required to get the application to work at all.
-
Even in area’s with full cell phone reception, 3G networks are unreliable. After data is finally loaded, users find themselves staring at blank screens, forcing them to start all over.
-
Loading a basic map takes over a minute. So, user’s must have a lot of time to waste while househunting.
-
No matter what area the user was in, the prices for homes appeared and disappeared at random. Sometimes they would reappear after a while, sometimes they never did.
-
A lot of the Property information is outdated or does not display at all.
-
Zillow estimates of home value, which they call “zestimates” are unreliable, outdated and data is unavailable for a lot of regions in the country, making this feature nearly worthless for determining sales data.
-
There is no feature that allows “bookmarking” of the homes you look up or see. So, tech users will have to write down addresses on a piece of paper or pull an information sheet from an InfoTube or InfoBox, anyway.
-
Only properties listed on the MLS by real estate agents appear in searches of Zillow home listings. iPhone user’s won’t see thousands of great properties that are listed for sale by owner, builder or investor, or lender.
While the new Zillow iPhone app maybe a great concept, it is far from being a killer software application for real estate. Unreliable and missing data, coupled with the lack of 3G reception, make using an iPhone to access real estate data a frustrating, hair pulling experience, even for the most diehard tech fan.
Our Conclusion: If you are seriously in the real estate market, forget about using an iPhone or any phone to learn about homes for sale. For true, instant wireless communication, jump out of the car and pull an information sheet from an InfoTube or InfoBox. If you are serious about real estate, sometimes, Low Tech is the Best Tech.
Have you tried it?
Did you really not hear a single good thing “on the street”? (User reviews have been overwhelmingly positive)
Corrections to your post:
- The app includes both FSBO listings and by-agent listings. It also includes the Make Me Move listings that are unique to Zillow.
- Sales data comes from (factual) public records and not from (estimated) Zestimate values.
- It takes seconds to get the app to work. You don’t even need to enter an address to get started.
- Loading a map does certainly not take over a minute. Even on the Gen 1 Edge connection. At least it doesn’t for me or anyone else I’ve spoken to that’s used it.
This morning on the way to work, I was shopping for for sale condo’s while commuting into downtown Seattle on the bus using my iPhone and listinening to my iPod. Traditional marketing does can work but if any of the listings I viewed had had “InfoTube’s” they would have been absolutely useless to me. Just sayin’.
Hey David G,
You must have a more reliable 3G network than I experienced in Atlanta metro area. It was over all a slow, frustrating experience. Once I did get some data loaded, I found the voyeur aspect very fun, indeed. I love new technology, but I did find the glitches in and out of coverage area’s and the speed tiring.
If Zillow allows “by owner” listings, they should contact me. We have thousands on our website we would happily feed to Zillow for inclusion in their database. We are always looking for ways to increase visability for our customer’s.
ugh-In my opinion, real estate needs to shape up in its honesty and reliability, and yes, new technology is wonderful, but people need to step up their game first.