Capitalism 2.0, version 2.0

I'm currently in the process of redesigning Capitalism 2.0.  You may see a couple of different designs as we experiment with look & feel.  This thread will have some polls if you're interested in voting for looks you like.

Comments

[Brand]

Over on patrick.net you made an offhand remark about Zillow "selling out to the REIC". I'm interested in a property for sale on Zillow and the MLS. However, I noticed that I can no longer access Charts & Data for that property, including the highly useful sales history data. Is that feature now disabled for properties offered through Zillow, or is it just a quirk of this particular house?

If it really is disabled, then that's some serious arm-twisting by Zillow. List with us, or the sales history will be available to the public free of charge.

[randolfe]

The info should still be available. They just moved it and (intentionally or accidentally) made it harder to find. It's under the charts tab and after the captcha.

My complaint is that agents & sellers are allowed to *edit* their data, including data which should be historical data. For example, one home I was tracking and had bid on earlier used to show the previous 3 sales in Zillow, including a flip in 2005.

The sales history once revealed the home sold for $1.1mm in 2004, $1.4 in 2005 and then was listed for $1.9mm in 2006.

Now the sales history shows 1 transaction in 2004 for $1.5mm.

Worse yet, there were 4 other homes for sale on the street in the same range, and they all had their sales histories revised similarly. So now the zestimates are astronomical. The home I'm talking about shows a zestimate of $2.9mm this morning. 2 houses down sold in November for $1.5mm yet has a zestimate of $2.7mm. Oh, and that home listed for $1.95mm, so it sold for almost 25% under listing.

Based on my own experience and observations, Zillow has been corrupted by the REIC, or at least by highly motivated and reasonably sophisticated agents gaming the system.

[Brand]

I guess it was bound to happen when Zillow enabled advertising. Selling a house is more difficult when people have accurate (or at least impartially collected) records of what you paid and when. It made it easier to prey on busted flippers. :)

Of course, if real estate were a regulated industry, hiding or altering publicly presented records would be considered illegal, or at the very least unprofessional.