I decided to put my parent’s home up for sale. They’re empty nesters and really should downsize. And all those stairs ” it’s just going to be too much when they get really old. I think they’ll agree it’s a good idea.
If I choose to tell them.
See, I put their home up for sale on Zillow. I’ve also started a discussion through the Zillow “Q&A” tool with tons of cool people who want to know all kinds of things about the place. I don’t know why that one guy wanted to know if my parents are going on vacation any time this summer. Some people are so nosy!
Ok, I didn’t really do this. But I could have. And that’s bugging me. Does it bug you?
I am an online real estate booster. Have been for nearly 10 years. I like Zillow a lot. Its launch was a seminal event in the current online real estate renaissance.
But, really, let’s slow down here. A 19 year-old may post pictures of himself all over Facebook and create a confessional monument of the most personal kind on MySpace and feel just fine about it. It’s a placeless and thus secure act of self expression.
Me on the other hand? I’m a 35 year old father of one who gets the heebie-jeebies looking at my daughter’s red wagon sitting in my driveway in the super-cool “birdseye” view of my home.
Ok, maybe I’m paranoid. But I suspect I’m not alone. A home is very personal, the place into which the worries, dangers and eyes of the world do not come uninvited. You might talk to the weird guy in line next to you at Starbucks, but you don’t invite him over for beers in your backyard.
I suspect this “Creepy Factor” explains a fair amount of the less than Facebook-ish growth of Zillow’s member base and posting activity. It may also explain why BackFence announced it’s going out of business this week. And why StreetAdvisor feels like a ghost town just months after it was erected.
Our homes and neighborhoods are not fodder for chit-chat like so many bars on Yelp. I think there are plenty of plays yet to be made in online real estate. I just hope those who make them run a “creepy test” on them first.
– Brian Boero
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Yeah Brian-
Zillow has "crossed the line" for me in sooo many ways.
1- lack of respect for personal privacy.
2- tossing quarter-baked info out there, claiming that it's accurate.
3- lack of respect for the agent, the individual that has driven the realestate business for 50 years.
I think they underestimated the power of face-to-face contact on the biggest purchase of peoples lives and overestimated their "midas" abilities.
md
I also agree with most of what you have to say. It is creepy.
But, at this point, how can we fix it?
The masses aren't yet that upset over their privacy being violated. Most don't even have a clue that Zillow exists.
More regulation?
Just throwing out a few thoughts…
Hi Brian, it's David from Zillow,
Thanks for this feedback. We take our visitors' privacy very seriously and I'd like to address a few of the issues you've raised;
- I'm surprised you can identify a toy in our aerial imagery. The resolution of those images has been optimized to allow the maximum detail possible without facilitating the identification of people or other personally identifiable information (license plates etc).
- If you had tried to claim your parents' home on Zillow.com, you would have been asked to verify that you are the owner. You would have also had to falsely warrant that the information you provided was accurate and that affidavit could be used in your prosecution (should it come to that.) We've given a lot of thought to opportunities for abuse in our design of the site and we staff a team of moderators who respond to reports of malicious behavior that are flagged for our attention.
There is a lot of personal information that is part of the public record about your home. It includes ownership details and mortgage information. At Zillow, we've chosen the conservative approach to personal privacy and we don't publish any of this information.
Zillow's privacy policy can be reviewed here;
http://www.zillow.com/corp/Privacy.htm
David,
Thanks for the comment. I know Zillow takes privacy seriously, but my point was larger — to try and understand why neighborhood and home related communities have not taken off as rapidly as many assumed. I used a dramatic hypothetical to illustrate a subtle sense of unease that may explain at least part of this. I could be completely wrong.
There are other dimension to this as well. For example, in an age when the home is a core financial asset for many families, putting home price estimates online feels to me like displaying one's bank balance for all to see.
I may be unusual in my personal feelings on this. But that's all part of the discussion.
Brian
Hi Brian, I'm Brian Ward – the Community Manager at StreetAdvisor. We encourage people to write about their street in a safe anonymous way that does not easily identify individuals, either themselves or others. I've just written a blog post about it too – see Protecting your privacy on StreetAdvisor.com at http://blog.streetadvisor.com/streetadvisor/2008/01/new1.html
I also agree with most of what you have to say. It is creepy.
But, at this point, how can we fix it?
The masses aren't yet that upset over their privacy being violated. Most don't even have a clue that Zillow exists.
More regulation?
Just throwing out a few thoughts…