A new company called Zillow.com is set to open the doors to its site and its collection of property assessment data today. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “With an assessment known as a Zestimate, Zillow.com takes into consideration historical property information, square footage, number of bedrooms, neighboring homes and other factors to determine estimated values of 42 million of the 85 million residences in the United States. It then overlays that information on aerial and satellite maps, so home shoppers from Miami to Seattle can get a better idea of the market value of homes in those cities.” The site, apparently, is similar to the already existing New York City-based PropertyShark, mentioned in an earlier post, but covers the entire United States. No word on the exact release time but expect the site to see heavy traffic for the first days at least.

Update (9 February 2006): Getting up at 6 AM EST helps when you need to check a busy site. The Zillow site is up and running and allows users to find the value of a house at an address or street block. It also allows you to find comparably valued houses in the same neighbourhood. Clicking on a house icon provides you with the specifics on the house. The site seems to run on Javascript and employs a version of technology developed by GlobeXplorer. Very nice site with a clean interface that’s simple to use. The map itself is either can be a street map, a satellite image or a combination of both.