A New Home Site on the Block

A New Home Site on the Block

A New Home Site on the Block
Former Expedia founder Richard Barton's Zillow.com aims to hook users with automated real estate appraisals. Will its ad model work?


Researching real estate on the Web? If so, you're probably looking for the answer to one of two questions: What is my home worth, and which houses are for sale in the neighborhood where I want to live? To get an online estimate of a home's value, you often have to hand over your name and phone number so a service like HouseValues.com (SOLD ) can send a local agent your way. That will begin to change with the unveiling of Zillow.com, the long-awaited online real estate startup led by Expedia (EXPE ) founder Richard N. Barton.

Zillow's main product will be an automated home-appraisal service, supported by advertising and based on a vast storehouse of data (2 terabytes, for anyone keeping score) that covers public records of home sales across the country. Even in its beta-testing phase, which opens to the public Feb. 8, the site has enough data to provide appraisals -- or "Zestimates" -- for 40 million U.S. homes. That's almost half the nation's single-family units.