Real estate Web 2.0 company, Zillow.com has unveiled Showcase Ads.  Showcase Ads is a way for local companies to reach Zillow’s audience of real estate agents, homeowners, buyers, sellers, etc.  Through Showcase Ads, local advertisers are able to buy a certain percentage of advertisements within a submitted zip code.  This gives Zillow users the chance to find out what local businesses exist in the region that they are searching for.

Showcase Ads is Zillow’s second advertising platform.  The first was EZ Ads, an advertising platform that has about 13,000 advertisers since it launched in April 2007.  Showcase Ads guarantees that anyone who signs up will reach 25% of those who search for a specific zip code.  Ambitious advertisers can even buy-out 100% of the reach. 

“Zillow is committed to offering local professionals affordable and easy- to-use tools to get in front of our large audience of consumers interested in real estate and buying and selling homes,” stated Greg Schwartz, VP of Ad Sales at Zillow.com. “We strongly believe that the more targeted an ad can be, both at a national and local level, the more useful the consumer will find it and the more successful the advertiser will be.”

Advertisers can place photos and phone numbers of their business on the Showcase Ads.  A consortium of 282 newspapers will be selling Showcase Ads through their own local direct sales teams as well.  The pricing structure for Showcase Ads is geographically based.  Ads that are in bigger cities will have a bigger price.

Signing up for Showcase Ads will be available in the Advertisers section of Zillow.com shortly.  Zillow receives about 5 million monthly uniques per month.

Related Link:
1. Zillow press release
2. Zillow.com

Real estate valuation website, Zillow.com announced a crucial deal with a few newspaper companies yesterday.  Many real estate consumers have been turning to online forms of research rather than newspapers lately.  Zillow.com is announcing a partnership with 11 publishing companies.  The companies include the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, MediaNews Group Inc. (Denver Post), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the San Jose Mercury News.

The 11 publishing companies have represent over 282 different newspapers.  The newspapers will have the ability to add Zillow content and features into their own sites.  Zillow was the fifth-most visited real estate website based on October data from Nielsen.  AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Realtor.com are in the top four.

When realtors approach these newspaper companies for advertising space on houses for sales or apartments for rent, they will also be offered the opportunity to place ad space on Zillow to complement the newspaper listings.  Spencer Rascoff, CFO of Zillow is heading the deal and stated that the revenue-sharing aspect of the deal is still being worked out.

Zillow.com^[1], the website that offers valuations on real estate and provides information regarding homes for sale announced today on their blog^[2] that they have launched several new features.  The three new features includes a customized homepage, discussions pages, and 6500+ new Neighborhood Pages with intentions to adding many more.

The Neighborhood Pages include demographic information of people that live in the featured neighborhoods.  In these pages, users are also encouraged to talk about local news, add events such as garage sales, and share photos of neighborhoods. 

Another new feature is the Discussions pages, general interactions about real estate is encouraged.  Discussions are sorted by groups.  The Zillow blog mentions that if one is interested in advice for financing a home is under the “Buying a Home” and if one is a real estate agent, one is encouraged to interact in the “Real Estate Professionals” category.

And the last new feature announced today is the customized home page.  The Zillow home page displays a user’s Q&A activity, displays homes posted for sale based on user-chosen criteria along with other houses in the neighborhood, etc.  VC Ratings has some commentary on the financial correlation between the new features and Zillow’s funding as well at: http://vcratings.thedealblogs.com/2007/07/zillow_launches_social_network.php^[3]

[1] Zillow.com
[2] Zillow Blog: New Today: Welcome to the Neighborhood!
[3] VC Ratings: Zillow launches social networking features to catch up to Trulia

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed a complaint with the FTC against Zillow stating that the company is misleading consumers and real estate professionals that rely on the accuracy of its home valuation service.

Zillow has created a lot of buzz around its home value estimation tool. I know a number of real estate agents that use Zillow’s valuation tool on a regular basis. And nearly all those agents heavily rely on the accuracy of the valuation. Therefore, if Zillow is in fact misleading people, this could become a major issue.

You can check out the complaint PDF here. [link]

In the complaint, the NCRC states that Zillow misrepresents itself as the Kelly Blue Book for homes. It also states that  Zillow misrepresents the accuracy percentage of its home estimates. According to Zillow, its estimates are with-in 10% of a home’s selling price. Unfortunately, many consumers do not realize that they should take any online home valuation tool’s estimate with a grain of salt. Zillow should maybe add a disclaimer for real estate professionals stating that its estimates may be inaccurate.

I do hope that Zillow gets out of this complaint. I really like Zillow’s website. It’s intuitive and easy to use. And even if the estimates are not completely accurate, at least it’s a place to start.