It’s all over the web:
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes equal access to credit and capital for underserved communities, has filed a 12-page complaint (PDF) against Zillow with the Federal Trade Commission.
Having obviously been educated at the David Barry school of frivolous real estate complaints, the NCRC alleges that some shady people have conned [or "could con", I'm not sure which] gullible people into doing real estate transactions on the basis of a Zestimate.
It’s not immediately clear whether the NCRC is a) trying to help said gullible people, or b) upset that said shady people are cutting in on NCRC’s turf and making money off Zillow.
- Original claim on NCRC site
- The Bloodhound calls it a shakedown
- The Future of Real Estate Marketing’s take on it
- Sellsius reports
A part of the complaint appears to be that some people take the Zestimate as gospel truth and are harmed if the Zestimate is too high or too low.
So, here’s my modest proposal for Zillow. Change your home page so it says:
4 responses so far ↓
1 jf.sellsius // Oct 26, 2006 at 10:50 pm
The best I’ve seen yet. That says it all.
2 A modest proposal becomes more ambitious… at Three Oceans Real Estate — Insights from a Wired Bay Area Realtor // Oct 26, 2006 at 10:54 pm
[...] Now that you’ve refined your virtual-pumpkin-carving skills, spend a few minutes putting together an entry for my “Re-design Zillow’s homepage to make it NCRC-proof” contest. I’ve already submitted my entry. I don’t have t-shirts, so the lucky winner will get, oh, a $10 Starbucks card and the right to rename my blog for a day. Howzat sound? [...]
3 Seattle Housing Buzz » Blog Archive » Just Plain Dumb // Oct 27, 2006 at 11:17 am
[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. « John L. Scott will continue Realtor.com feed Seattle FD gets petoxygen masks » [...]
4 Maureen McCabe // Oct 27, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Thanks for the laugh….I don’t know how anyone could out do that.
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