As a real estate professional, I'm continually bombarded by the question, "Why does Zillow price my home differently?"
If we go on Zillow's website, this is how they explain it: The Zestimate is created by an automatic software process designed by statisticians, and there is no ability for humans...
Posted by Matt Barker on Friday, September 17, 2010 at 9:47 AMBy Matt Barker / September 17, 20102 Comments
Final Report: Forced vs. Unforced Registration Test
At the beginning of our test, we promised to report our findings through the end of the year. It has been eye opening for us to track our results in this much detail and we appreciate your input and advice along the way. Below is the 13th and final reporting data for the test.
Final Weekly Data: December 25 - December 30, 2009
So this is the Data that includes Christmas Day and the week between Christmas and New Years. As such, we figured this would be a "dead week" for reporting...meaning the numbers would be abysmal. But, in looking back over the past could of weeks, this reporting data is significantly better than the 2 weeks prior. Go figure?
Posted by Matt Barker on Monday, December 14, 2009 at 12:22 PMBy Matt Barker / December 14, 20091 Comment
Website Data for December 3 - December 9, 2009
We saw slight up-ticks for Total Users and Uniques on both sites this week. It's a little surprising that we haven't seen a significant drop in traffic during what is normally a "slower time" of the year. Could it be the extended tax credit? Time will tell. Here are the numbers for last week:
Posted by Matt Barker on Friday, December 4, 2009 at 11:36 AMBy Matt Barker / December 4, 2009Comment
Website Data for November 26 - December 2, 2009
This week's total visitors and unique visitors were down about 13% on the Unforced website and nearly 6% on the Forced Site. BUT, the total action items (IDX registrations, showing requests, contact forms) increased on both sites. Basically, our traffic was down, but our leads were up. Go figure?
Posted by Matt Barker on Monday, November 30, 2009 at 4:24 PMBy Matt Barker / November 30, 2009Comment
Website Data for November 19 - November 25, 2009
It's now officially the "Holiday Season" so we'll see what impact that has on the weekly reporting for the last month! For this week we saw nearly identical visitors and uniques on each website, but lower than expected lead actions (IDX registrations and inquiry requests). This is likely due to the start of the usual "seasonal adjustment" for our local market.
Posted by Matt Barker on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 12:12 PMBy Matt Barker / November 19, 2009Comment
Website Data for November 12 - November 18, 2009
The overall lead totals were down this week. Visitors and Uniques were nearly identical to last week so I think we'll chalk the low lead totals up to time-of-year / approaching Holiday season. What this does tell us is that we need a higher traffic volume to achieve our goals during a slower time...maybe a test for another day! Here's the Data:
Posted by Matt Barker on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 9:54 AMBy Matt Barker / November 18, 20097 Comments
Website Data for November 5 - November 11, 2009
Well, not much changed from last week. The total visitors and total uniques are nearly identical and Saint-paul-real-estate.com (unforced site) had slightly better non-IDX lead totals while BarkerHedges.com (forced site) saw the same net total of non-IDX leads and an increase in IDX leads. A few more weeks of testing and maybe we'll be able to make some sense out of these numbers!
Posted by Matt Barker on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 11:04 AMBy Matt Barker / November 5, 2009Comment
Website Data for October 29 - November 4, 2009
We are now reporting data for our 2nd month of testing for the Forced vs. Unforced Registration Test. For whatever reason, the week 4 numbers were the highest totals so far and this week the totals dropped a little. Probably a market indicator, but we'll see what happens in coming weeks. To track other test results and view comments and posts about this topic, check out: www.forcedregistration.com.