My Currency is a new real estate company that tries to turn Zillow on its head.
Zillow, you’ll recall, is controversial, because it estimates values of homes. Some people love to gawk at the estimates for their neighbors’ homes, others are irked when they feel Zillow gives a low-ball value to their home. Zillow works because it is top-down. Unlike other Web 2.0 companies, it didn’t require lots of user-participation to get where it is now. On the other hand, that might be Zillow’s weakness. After a user visits the site, what do they do then?
My Currency is the opposite. It lets people participate, and encourages them to estimate the value of homes for sale. If a home is selling for $500,000, and you think it is worth less, you get points if it is sold for less. The idea is that estate agents will want to participate. If they develop a track record of accuracy, their credibility grows, they get more customers. By aggregating votes from all users, the “wisdom of the crowds” can also be assessed — which may or may not help in home-buying decisions.
My Currency has a futures index, too, which lets agents and others predict the future average square-foot price of homes in a region.
The San Francisco company launches at DEMO. The company is focusing initially on housing but plans to roll out services in other areas. Its model is advertising.
Karim Tahawi, Founder and CEO of My-Currency.com, is a former derivatives trader and former Vice-Chairman of the Pacific Exchange.
The challenge for My Currency will be to command enough authority to make people want to participate. This is a long shot; there’s so much noise out there — Zillow, Trulia and many others.
8 Comments
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David G from Zillow.com said:
Hi Matt, it’s David from Zillow. A quick comment on …
“After a user visits the site, what do they do then?”
FYI - we’ve added functionality to Zillow beyond valuations. Among other features, owners and agents can now post their homes for sale on the site. My favorite new feature is “Make Me Move”, whereby home owners with no real plan to sell can test the market’s interest in their house by posting a dream price that would literally “Make Me Move”.
Valuations (Zestimates) are still a core part of the Zillow experience and one that we continue to fine-tune (just added 2M Zestimates) but there’s a lot more to do on the site than merely viewing Zestimates — including the ability for users to calculate their own estimates and publish those for other users to view.
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homeless said:
Interesting. I’m wonder will agents themsevles really necessarily want to contribute to this site. On one hand you’ll have the selling agent want to valuate it at the high end to help the sellers out no? The buyer’s agent could come back and work in the opposite direction to get the best deal for the buyer. Opposing forces. You may in fact have created an auction for the home in a sense with multiple buyers bidding down/up the home against what the seller initially listed it for. To me it doesn’t necessarily indicate the true valuation of the home but rather what the market will bear. I can see homes that are for sale will generate this kind of crowdvalue but what about homes not for sale? Will there be enough people contributing to valuations of those homes? Who’s in the best position to valuate the home? Agents perhaps? General public not 100% likely (maybe they’ll get the valuation from Zillow anyway). And are there going to be enough agents with enough time to really generate the kind of crowd value that is truely representative and accurate?
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Arkane said:
Homeless - “To me it doesn’t necessarily indicate the true valuation of the home but rather what the market will bear.” In fact, what the market will bear is exactly what determines the true value of a property! That’s why auctions are often your best value indicator.
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Rovingeconomist said:
… and My-Currency is far from an auction. At least you get to see the object you are bidding on at an auction - albeit in a catalog sometimes. On My-Currency, there are no pictures or detailed property info about the house. Valuing a house under these conditions is like asking someone to bid on my car, but I won’t show you what it looks like, the mileage, repair history, etc - but tell me what you will pay for my GM - I’m asking $10,000.
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Clarum said:
cute…but cmon, this needs to scale fast or will die just as fast…the bloom is off the residential real estate rose now…now sure this is much of anything!
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Pirate Prentice said:
David, make sure you trademark “Zestimates” -it is has winner written all over it.
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Karim Tahawi said:
Karim here from My-Currency. Thanks very much for the thoughts and discussion.
A couple of quick thoughts: First, we are in an Alpha so many things are still being deployed and content seeded.
Second, our intention is not to replace the listings of brokers and agents but to point people to them. Our goal is to bring people together to aggregate distributed knowledge and create transparency on properties and neighborhoods while vetting professional expertise.
Third, our roll-out strategy is to gain adoption in San Francisco and then to add cities quickly thereafter - the Craigslist model.
Thanks and I look forward to more discussions. Feel free to contact me directly at http://www.my-currency.com/feedback.php
Cheers!
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Andrew said:
Karim, I trust you plan to change your domain name at some point? The owners of MyCurrency.com are going to get major traffic from you :)
As for Zillow, I don’t think “Make Me Move” prices are going to get people to stick around.
