Author: Aaron Weber

Zillow Zestimates: Zimproved Zaccuracy Zcoming?

I mentioned the other day that housing problems are especially noticeable in my neighborhood– that there’s a house on Wallace Street with an asking price of $789k and a Zestimate of $532k.

Well, that discrepancy isn’t because the house is overpriced– or at least, not all of it. Part of the issue is that Zillow’s got old data. Zillow’s description shows a 1365 sq-foot, three-bedroom, 2.5-bath. In contrast, the listing on Somerville.com shows that the seller has turned it into a 1500-sq-foot with three full baths and the requisite granite countertops. I saw the place at an open house and it really is an impressive renovation.

(An aside: Granite is going to be this decade’s avocado green. Sadly, if Somerville’s ongoing love-affair with vinyl and aluminum siding is any indication, it’ll be the hot thing around here for at least another fifty years.)

I don’t know if fancy counters, a stainless fridge, and a new tub are worth enough to explain the difference in price, but they justify at least some of it.

Zillow is now accepting homeowner updates and corrections, so we’ll see if that has any effect …

Carbonated Milk

Aidan reminded me of the existence of carbonated milk. That reminded me of a Salon article titled I come to bury Iamcarbonatedmilk.com, not to praise it. It’s about expired domain names and why people register them.

I seem to remember being around when several absurd names were registered, including assbarn.com and the now-defunct mybuttthemovie.com. The motivation in each case quite simple: it seemed like a good idea at the time because we were very drunk. That also explains a lot of stuff purchased from EBay.

New StyleFeeder Features

Hey look, new features: when you add an item, you get room for more detailed notes and a list of all the tags you’ve used in the past.

Jim Moore likes it. He does think that this means it’s becoming a blogging platform, and that being a blogging platform is great. I’m not sure I agree. Having detailed notes is nice, sharing them with your friends is nice, but I don’t know that the world needs another blogging platform any more than I agree with JWZ’s assertion that every application will eventually grow until it can send email.