Columbus Ohio real estate

I have an investment property in Florida. In the last three years, twice I’ve listed it for sale. Twice I’ve ended up renting it. Twice I’ve relied on my agentto help me with the decision making that took me down this path to simply get the home occupied. It is a big reality that today’s real estate market is forcing many people, like myself, to wear the landlord hat because of market conditions.

Today I am excited to announce that Zillow is expanding its marketing services to not only include homes FOR SALE, but now also include the ability to market homes as being FOR RENT.

Zillowhas always been a little different than other real estate sites because our foundation is a data base of ALL homes, not just homes that are currently on the market. Today we have about 93M property records on the site, with about 3.6M of them having been flagged as being for sale. Because of this, we get people in all stages of home ownership, from renting to buying to owning.

According to the U.S. Census American Housing Survey 2005, there are 34M rental households in the US, with 53% of rentals being 4 units or less and 30% being single family homes. And when we look at the 8M+ people that visit Zillow each month, nearly 1M of them are exclusively renters with untold others “on the fence” on whether to buy or rent.

So what is Zillow’s new product?

• Zillow offers a Featured Rental Listing for just $9.95 for 180 days. Featured Listings are sorted to the top of search resultsand receive six times more views than non-featured listings.
• Rich rental listings can be created with unlimited photos and detailed property information, and you only have to post this information once for up to 180 days.

How will people find my Rental Listing on Zillow?

• Of course we’ll have the standard search, but we couldn’t just stop there.
• Zillow has built the industry’s first search by monthly payment– allowing users to simultaneously search for homes for sale and for rent based on a monthly payment they can afford. (monthly payment on homes for sale will be calculated using that day’s mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage rate, assuming 20% down)

Zillow’s goal is to help people make intelligent and informed choices in all stages of life – whether they are renting, deciding whether to rent or buy, shopping for a home today, refinancing, remodeling or just dreaming. With the addition of rental listings and search, we are giving our users another tool to help them throughout their decision making process.

Click here to experience the For Rent search on Zillow.

Announcement on the Zillow Blog.

Post a home for rent.  

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Each quarter Zillow tracks Homeowner Confidence by conducting a survey, along with Harris Interactive, to gage homeowner sentiment about the value of their home.  When we started 6 quarters ago, perception and reality were quite far apart.  But each quarter homeowners have come closer and closer to realizing that values have dropped nationwide, and the spread has narrowed. 

However in Q3 of 2009, perception and real estate markets were literally all over the map.  People in the Northeast were overly cynical about home values, while those on the West coast were overly optimistic. 

From a national standpoint, when asked about their own home's value over the past year:

• 25% think their home's value has increased
• 26% think their home's value has stayed the same
• 49% think their home's value has decreased

In reality, 72 % of U.S. homes lost value over the past year, and 22% of homes increased in value. That's fewer homes declining versus Q2(83%), and a smaller Misperception Index of 10 (vs. 13 in Q2 and 17 in Q3 2008).  A Misperception Index of zero would mean homeowners' perceptions were in line with actual values.

Here's a breakdown of homeowner perception vs. reality nationwide:

So what does the general public think about the future of their real estate market?  The vast majority of homeowners - 84% - believes their home has reached a bottom and will not decline any further. Specifically:

• 41% think their home's value will increase in the next six months
• 43% think their home's value will stay the same
• 17% of homeowners think their home's value will decrease

There is a lot going on with housing right now, both organically in-market and with government stimulus, so it is hard to predict with any certainty what the future holds. 

As Zillow's Amy Bohutinsky, Zillow VP of Communications put it - "Overly optimistic homeowners?  Probably.  Confused homeowners?  Absolutely.  And I don't blame them one bit."  This is why it is so important people have professional representation to help interpret what is happening locally and maybe, to certain degree, even help look forward. 

Curious about home value trends in your neighborhood, please visit Zillow's new and improve Local Info tab to see dynamic home value charts and neighborhood make up stats.

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Here are Zillow's local traffic numbers for the month of October. The numbers are down a little this month from our highs in July and August, but this is to be expected as we near the end of the year. 

You can also find more traffic information directly on Zillow.  If you go to any property on the site, click on Home Info in the left hand column, and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see that we publish a running traffic count for the home, zip, county, and state for the month. 

Also, if you've created a free account on Zillow, we now send periodic traffic updates via email for your specific listings. 

 

Zillow City Traffic For October 2009

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