Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate

by Spencer Rascoff, Stan Humphries Narrated by Spencer Rascoff

Overview

THE ORIGINAL AUDIOBOOK EDITION WAS PUBLISHED AS ZILLOW TALK: THE NEW RULES OF REAL ESTATE. THE NEW TITLE OF THIS BOOK IN OTHER EDITIONS IS ZILLOW TALK: REWRITING THE RULES OF REAL ESTATE. "THE NEW RULES OF REAL ESTATE" IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF FIRST TEAM REAL ESTATE-ORANGE COUNTY.

The New York Times bestseller--now updated with a new chapter!

How do you spot an area poised for gentrification? Is spring or winter the best time to put your house on the market? Will a house on Swamp Road sell for less than one on Gingerbread Lane? The fact is that the rules of real estate have changed drastically over the past five years. To understand real estate in our fast-paced, technology-driven world, we need to toss out all of the outdated truisms and embrace today's brand new information. But how?

Enter Zillow, the nation's #1 real estate website and mobile app. Thanks to its treasure trove of proprietary data and army of statisticians and data scientists, led by chief economist Stan Humphries, Zillow has been able to spot the trends and truths of today's housing market while acknowledging that a home is more than an economic asset. In ZILLOW TALK, Humphries and CEO Spencer Rascoff explain the science behind where and how we live now and reveal practical, data-driven insights about buying, selling, renting and financing real estate. Read this book to find out why:

-It's better to remodel your bathroom than your kitchen
-Putting the word "cute" in your listing could cost you thousands of dollars
-You shouldn't buy the worst house in the best neighborhood
-You should never list your house for $444,000
-You shouldn't list your house for sale before March Madness or after the Masters

Densely packed with entertaining anecdotes and invaluable how-to advice, ZILLOW TALK is poised to be the real estate almanac for the next generation.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/02/2015
With an iconoclastic ebullience reminiscent of Freakonomics, Rascoff and Humphries, respectively CEO and chief economist of Zillow.com, exploit the online giant's massive database and sophisticated analytics to debunk conventional real estate wisdom. According to them, no, you shouldn't buy the worst house in the best neighborhood ("It's the worst house for a reason"), but you might want to buy the worst house in the hottest neighborhood, if your timing is impeccable (and these clever guys tell you how to predict the hot spots). To afford a good school district, look in the modest neighborhood bordering the affluent one. And beware: foreclosures are often not the bargains they once were. Another piece of advice from Rascoff and Humphries: avoid "unique" as an ad description like the plague—your beloved abode may "sell for as much as 30 to 50 percent less than expected!" This entertaining, quick read is not so much a how-to guide as a grab bag of surprising but useful real estate facts. It won't lead you step by step through the process of buying or selling a home, but its intelligent and clever analysis of various facets of the market will challenge and enlighten both professionals and those of us who just need a place to live. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

"This book is fantastic. I am making every single person I know read it. Drawing upon an enormous database of housing trends and prices, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and Chief Economist Stan Humphries arm would-be home buyers and real estate addicts like me with the information and data they need to understand the new world of real estate. Smart, empowering, surprising, and a little bit addictive, Zillow Talk is a guidebook for any would-be home buyer or seller. It's also an awful lot of fun."
-Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, University of Toronto


"I thought I knew it all when it came to making money in real estate, but ZILLOW TALK proved me wrong. This book is a game changer for both buyers and sellers."
—Barbara Corcoran, Real Estate Mogul and star of ABC's Shark Tank

"Spencer is one of the sharpest executives I've come to know, and fortunately for you, dear reader, he's in the residential real estate business. This book provides you with the breadth and depth of his knowledge on the subject, wide and deep as it is."
—Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter

"ZILLOW TALK is an indispensable playbook for anyone interested in the new rules of 21st century real estate. Written by Spencer and Stan, the creators of the largest online database of housing information in the world, the authors transpose a wealth of statistics that only Zillow could provide, into an easy-to-read, jargon free guide to understanding the ever-evolving real estate market of the new millennium. Whether you're buying, selling, an industry professional, or you just love real estate, ZILLOW TALK is a must-read."
—Dottie Herman, CEO of Douglas Elliman

"A fun and engaging must-read for home buyers, sellers, and renters looking to make sense of the ever-changing real estate landscape as they plot their moves."
—Vera Gibbons, Personal Finance Expert and TV Commentator

Library Journal

★ 12/01/2014
This title seeks to arm home buyers, sellers, and owners with the relevant data to navigate today's postrecession housing market. Coauthored by Rascoff and Humphries, the CEO and chief economist of Zillow (zillow.com), respectively, the book tackles common myths (that remodeling a kitchen gives the best bang for your buck), niche trends (Manhattan real estate prices), and other topics (what your street name says about its value). It turns (mostly) Zillow statistics into interesting and relevant housing topics. While much of the coverage is very specific, the conclusion focuses on more general information and sometimes verges on editorializing. One example is the popular mortgage interest deduction (MID). Rascoff and Humphries state that it doesn't affect most people, only those who pay federal income taxes, itemize their deductions, and currently have a mortgage (about 13 percent of people). They recommend replacing it with a first-time home buyer tax credit or cash grant; they say that this would help less affluent buyers and wouldn't need to be subsidized by Washington, as the MID is. Extensively backed up by data and well sourced, this book is written in a fast-paced, conversational manner and is easy to read. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in statistics and the housing market, or real-estate watchers seeking new ways to look at housing.—Leigh Mihlrad, FDIC Lib., Washington, DC

Kirkus Reviews

2014-11-04
How-to advice on the new paradigms of real estate.When the 2008 housing bubble popped, the dynamics of buying, selling and renting shifted significantly. Rascoff, CEO of Zillow, the "largest real estate site on the Web," with 90 million visitors a month, and its chief economist, Humphries, pull together exhaustive data obtained from constantly updated algorithms and crunch these figures to give readers a definitive guide to real estate in the 21st century. They discuss the pros and cons of buying versus renting, having a fixed-rate mortgage over an adjustable-rate mortgage, and whether that kitchen remodel or man cave are really the best investments of your time and money. Want to know the best time of year to list a home, what a street name means in terms of housing prices, and how to spot the next neighborhood where houses will appreciate in value? These are just some of the numerous questions the authors address using the information they've compiled from their database of more than 100 million listings on Zillow. They analyze the superstitions surrounding numbers in a home's price, "decode" the words used in a listing to describe a house, debunk long-held real estate myths (e.g., always buy the worst home in the best neighborhood), consider the advantages and disadvantages of buying a foreclosure, and even look at the effect a nearby Starbucks has on housing prices. Informative and entertaining, their advice is filled with concrete figures enhanced by graphs and charts that help readers absorb their counsel in small, easy-to-manage bites. A collection of straightforward, easily assimilated facts and figures on the real estate business—a must-read for readers interested in buying, selling or renting a home.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173558206
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	01/27/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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