After a wonderfully fun — and occasionally frustrating — evening of hacking around, I’m please to present this mashup of Bay Area housing price trends. The graphs are from our friends at Altos Research, and the Google Maps were created using Zeemaps from Zeesource.

For a larger map, click here.

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So here I am in King’s Beach, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe, ostensibly on vacation. I’ll be spending some time today getting an offer ready to submit tomorrow. Fortunately, technology makes this pretty straightforward and painless… Thanks to the good folks at the Java Hut for providing some great coffee, a little table to work on, and funky, inspiring tunes (including, for a while, some classic Fela tunes)… ..and thanks to the neighboring restaurant, Steamers, for inadvertently providing me with Wifi access… …add in the help of my Lenovo X41 Tablet PC, our local real estate forms provider, an e-fax system, and, of course, my e-signature provider… …and it all comes together pretty effortlessly, even getting the 125 pages of disclosures ready for signature… Turns out the seller of the property on which I’m submitting an offer is a meticulous record-keeper. I know this dates me, but was there really a time when tradespeople charged only $10 an hour?

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This just in … thanks to a contribution from Marlow Harris, we now have the skinny on the accuracy of the Seattle real estate data from which Zillow spins its magic, and the results are pretty much the same as here in Menlo Park: the mid 80%’s. If you have access to the MLS in your area and would like to contribute 10 data points, please email me at and I’ll send you an invitation to my iRows spreadsheet.

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Taking up the challenge posed by Sellsius Real Estate, Greg the Phoenix Bloodhound takes on Ardell the Prolific Seattle Blogger in a race to see who can produce 101 cogent blog posts in a 24 hr period, beginning at 12:01am Tuesday Sep 26 and ending at midnight the same day.

Live coverage provided by Sellsius and The Property Monger.

Don’t just be a bystander — you can make some serious, if fake, money by betting on the outcome. Go to Inkling Markets (login required) and place your bets!

Here’s how this betting market works:

The “price” of each “stock” – one for Greg and one for Ardell – reflects the market’s current consensus of who will win. The market starts at $50 each—ie. each has a 50% chance of winning.

If you believe Greg’s prospects, for instance, are better than the current market price, then buy shares in Greg, which will drive his price – the % probability that he will win – up.

If you believe Greg’s prospects are weaker than the current price, then sell shares in Greg. (This market allows short sales, which means you can sell shares even if you don’t own them.)

The market closes at midnight on Tuesday. If Greg wins, his shares close at $100 and Ardell’s close at $0 and your shares are automatically cashed out. Likewise, if Ardell wins, her shares close at $100 and Greg’s at $0, and again your shares are automatically cashed out.

If neither of them makes it to 101 posts, then the one with the most posts at midnight on Tuesday will be declared the winner.

Email me at if you’d like more information.

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Hats off to the Zillow team for adding some ridiculously “z-addictive” features to their offering! The real estate blogosphere is abuzz with comments, some relatively positive and some negative.In this post, I’ll describe what I found, and in the next one, I’ll provide some commentary on what impact I think these features will have on the agent community and the general public.

While you can continue to use Zillow as before without registering, you do need to get a Zillow account before you can use some of these new features. Once you’ve done so, you search for a property…

…and click on “See home details” which gives you, uh, the home details…

…and three options.
“Save Favorite to My Zillow” is pretty tame. The other two options, however, have a lot of folks hot and bothered. Let’s see what the fuss is about…

“Owner Tools” gives you three further options:

Confirming ownership sounds a bit dubious at first, and indeed the first time you do it you only have to confirm the owner’s name:

Thankfully, to claim a second or subsequent property as your own, you have to enter your credit card information (which Zillow dutifully promises not to use for spurious purposes), enabling them to match their ownership records with the name associated with your credit card.On to the next feature…editing your home facts. They’ve made this ridulously easy to do. In my case, the basic features of the home were correct, but Zillow was missing information about the type of heating and cooling system, the roof type, and a few other items.

The third feature, “Create an Estimate and Make it Public” was also pretty straighforward. You start by editing basic home facts, if necessary……followed by adding home improvements……and other features… …and finally by specifying which comps make the most sense for your home:

When you’re all done, you get an updated personalized estimate, which is different from the public Zestimate.

Go ahead, give it a spin yourself! Warning — it is addictive.

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First there was Zip Realty.

Then Zip Realty 2.0©

But now there’s a new kid on the block…

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Thanks to Greg Swann for pointing this out…seems the temporary ceasefire between Redfin and other real estate players has fizzled out! Redfin has asked — very politely — a fellow real estate blogger to stop using the name “Real Estate 2.0″ because…they’ve patented that name. In the year 2006, can you really trademark the tag, “Real Estate 2.0″, especially if you

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