Tag Archives: Competition

Zillow to Award $1 Million Prize for an Improved Zestimate Later This Month

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The winning team beat nearly 4,000 teams from around the world and bested a Zillow benchmark model

Seattle, WA – Jan. 10, 2019 (PRNewswire) After almost two years and submissions by nearly 4,000 teams, the results are in. On January 30, 2019, Zillow will reveal the winner of the $1 million competition to improve the accuracy of the Zestimate. Zillow will also award $100,000 to the second-place team and $50,000 to the third-place team, officially concluding the Zillow Prize competition.

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In the quest for the $1 million Zillow Prize, the winning team had to beat the accuracy of a Zillow benchmark model when evaluated against real-time home sales between August and October 2018. Their algorithm also needed to score the largest improvement to the Zestimate home valuation’s accuracy among all the final competitors.

“Awarding the Zillow Prize is nearly two years in the making, and we’re thrilled to finally be naming the champion,” said Stan Humphries, creator of the Zestimate and Zillow Group’s chief analytics officer. “We’ve been impressed by the imagination and ingenuity all our competitors showed in improving the Zestimate. The winner’s improvements to the Zestimate will not only give people more accurate home valuations and knowledge about one of their biggest life investments, but also show the innovation that’s possible when we crowdsource ideas and put these types of challenges into the hands of data scientists around the world.”

Launched in May 2017, Zillow Prize attracted more than 3,800 competing teams representing 91 countries. To date, the contest has become one of the most popular machine learning competitions ever on Kaggle, the platform administering the contest.

Designed to be a starting point to help people estimate the value of a home, the introduction of the Zestimate in 2006 marked the first time homeowners had instant access to information about their homes’ estimated values, for free. Today, with valuations on more than 110 million homes across the U.S., constantly improving the Zestimate’s accuracy is a top priority for Zillow as it helps homeowners understand the value of what’s likely their largest asset, their home.

The Zestimate’s current margin of error is 4.5 percent nationwide. Zillow Prize, together with Zillow’s team of data scientists, helped bring to light new approaches for pushing the margin of error even lower, reaffirming Zillow’s commitment to helping people make the best decisions about real estate.

Visit www.zillow.com/zprize to learn more about the finalist teams.

About Zillow

Zillow® is the leading real estate and rental marketplace dedicated to empowering consumers with data, inspiration and knowledge around the place they call home, and connecting them with great real estate professionals. Zillow serves the full lifecycle of owning and living in a home: buying, selling, renting, financing, remodeling and more. Zillow Offers provides homeowners in some metropolitan areas with the opportunity to receive offers to purchase their home from Zillow. When Zillow buys a home, it will make necessary updates and list the home for resale on the open market.

In addition to Zillow.com, Zillow operates the most popular suite of mobile real estate apps, with more than two dozen apps across all major platforms. Launched in 2006, Zillow is owned and operated by Zillow Group (NASDAQ: Z and ZG) and headquartered in Seattle.

Tom Ferry Discusses New Agent Tips, Competing in Real Estate, AI, and Social Media Budgets

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In the following video, from the Tom Ferry YouTube channel, Tom discusses:

  • New agents looking to dominate a local market
  • killing it in video marketing
  • How to become more coachable
  • Concerns about AI stealing your job
  • Hating Open Houses
  • Maximizing your Facebook ad spend

Statement from NAR General Counsel Katie Johnson Regarding Innovation and Competition in Real Estate Brokerage

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Washington, D.C. – April 11, 2018 (nar.realtor) Later this year, a 10-year old settlement and consent decree between the National Association of Realtors® and the U.S. Department of Justice mandating how listings are displayed by online brokerages will expire. Prior to that, on June 5, 2018, NAR will have the opportunity to demonstrate the breadth and depth of competition in the real estate and brokerage industry at a public workshop held by the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission.

NAR Logo

To help show how the hundreds of multiple listing services, or MLSs, promote competition between real estate brokers, to the ultimate benefit of consumers, NAR asked independent, expert economist Frederik Flyer to explain how an MLS works in a new report published today, Procompetitive Benefits of Policies Limiting Access to Local Multiple Listing Service Data.

NAR’s General Counsel Katie Johnson released the following statement regarding innovation and competition in real estate brokerage and the upcoming DOJ and FTC workshop:

“The National Association of Realtors® asserts that the real estate market is vibrant, healthy and vigorously competitive. Technology innovation in the real estate industry is robust, and the notion that real estate isn’t highly competitive and listing data not readily available is unsubstantiated. To the contrary, a wealth of listing data is available to consumers and technology companies from a multitude of sources, and Realtors® provide their clients and consumers with more real estate information today than has ever been available.

“Further, the notion that innovation is spurred by providing real estate data to technology companies without any restrictions is simply erroneous. In fact, in most cases MLSs do not restrict listing data from third-party websites but instead leave the determination of what third-party listing websites will receive and display to the individual MLS participants whose listings are included in the MLS. Having one national property database with free and unrestricted access as some envision may be unrealistic, as this could lead to a degradation of information, or a tragedy of the commons, and others in the industry agree.

“We look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate the competitiveness in real estate brokerage during the FTC and DOJ workshop process, and I can confirm that NAR has no plans to alter MLS policies mandating how property listings are displayed by online brokerages when the 2008 settlement agreement expires November 18, 2018.”

The National Association of Realtors® is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.3 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.