Zillow laying off 25% of it's workforce (appraisal, percent, illegal, value)

[bigtrees]

Business & Technology | Zillow cuts staff by 25 percent | Seattle Times Newspaper

Good riddance! I think that website is an invasion of privacy and would like the whole thing to go away.

[sheenie2000]

I like this site. I don't think this site is an invasion of privacy. They get most of their information from the County Records which are public and available on line.

What's the difference?

[DMenscha]

We can now look forward to even worse "zestimates"

[MikeJaquish]

Originally Posted by bigtrees

There's another service called Redfin that is similiar but in fewer markets.

Originally Posted by bigtrees

Business & Technology | Zillow cuts staff by 25 percent | Seattle Times Newspaper

Redfin announced layoff of up to 20% of their workforce.

[bigtrees]

Originally Posted by bigtrees

Business & Technology | Zillow cuts staff by 25 percent | Seattle Times Newspaper

Good riddance! I think that website is an invasion of privacy and would like the whole thing to go away.

There's nothing illegal about Zillow. I just feel publishing the value of my house on a website - and allowing people to make comments about it without my permission - is an invasion of my personal privacy. I don't think it's ethical to create websites that list non-factual information about someones home online. It's legal, but that doesn't mean that I consider it ethical.

Truely, there isn't anything wrong with Zillow when people use it to estimate values of houses they're interested in (if they don't mind bad data). But it's when bosses look at their employees homes to estimate value, or brothers look at their sisters house, or parents look up the estimated value of their kids friends house, that you get ethical issues. Now these are all in how people use the site, but it's why I don't like it being there in the first place.

I think they should have an option to opt-out of publishing Zestimates and instead only publish the assessed data.

[middle-aged mom]

Zillow, and websites like it, use public information.

The Q/A thing is subject to abuse and can be manipulated to create a potential stigma.

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by bigtrees

There's nothing illegal about Zillow. I just feel publishing the value of my house on a website - and allowing people to make comments about it without my permission - is an invasion of my personal privacy. I don't think it's ethical to create websites that list non-factual information about someones home online. It's legal, but that doesn't mean that I consider it ethical.

Truely, there isn't anything wrong with Zillow when people use it to estimate values of houses they're interested in (if they don't mind bad data). But it's when bosses look at their employees homes to estimate value, or brothers look at their sisters house, or parents look up the estimated value of their kids friends house, that you get ethical issues. Now these are all in how people use the site, but it's why I don't like it being there in the first place.

I think they should have an option to opt-out of publishing Zestimates and instead only publish the assessed data.

You can do almost the same thing with the county appraisal records which are online as well although you get the county appraised value.

[Mike1306]

25%?

That's about how far off their zestimates are.

[GLS]

That's fine with me. Based upon their data they have already "laid-off" 50% of my equity.