Zillow

Have you heard of Richard Barton? Yes. He's the guy who launched Expedia.com a decade ago and helped transform the travel industry by handing over to consumers the same tools to book reservations that travel agents had long controlled.

He launched his next big venture last month -- Zillow.com (a beta version for now) that applies the same approach - this time to real estate. The site offers property information that has until recently been beyond the reach of the average buyer or seller who didn't took help from a real estate agent. At zillow.com, by typing in an address, the user can obtain an instant valuation of one home or all homes on a street or neighborhood along with a nice map from Google Earth.

Zillow goes through county records and other government data on 60 million homes nationwide. It then would use proprietary computer analysis to determine current values, which the company termed as "zestimates." The company is trying to create as complete a record as possible on individual properties including a home's history, all past sales transactions, tax assessments and other details. This should help put buyers and sellers on better footing during a real estate transaction.

It is true that a number of such sites are already available in the internet. IAC/InterActiveCorp's Domania, HomeGain, HouseValues and other sites surfaced up in the last few years as refinancing, purchase and related activities got boosted up. But Zillow has come up with some unique features. For example, a home's value on Zillow can be tracked historically against the performance of local, state or national real estate markets, much like comparing a stock against the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

[Disclaimer: LiveInUSA has no connection whatsoever with Zillow.com . The information here is being provided only because we think this could be useful to our readers]