Zillow Is Spying On You With New Algorithms To Check The Quality And Curbside Appeal Of Your Home

Zillow is about to let everyone on the internet know about your home’s slightest flaws. The online real estate company will use it depreciate your home’s Zestimate. Zillow announced on Thursday it has a new algorithm that uses photos to help decide the appeal and worth of your home.

Stan Humphries, Zillow’s Chief Analytics Officer wrote in a Medium post:

We’ve taught the Zestimate to discern quality by training convolutional neural networks with millions of photos of homes on Zillow, and asking them to learn the visual cues that signal a home feature’s quality, For instance, if a kitchen has granite countertops, the Zestimate now knows — based on the granite countertop’s pixels in the home photo — that the home is likely going to sell for a little more.

Homeowners who don’t want Zillow to use interior photos of their home can remove them.

However, they have to create an account. Then log in and claim the property as their own. From there they go to “Owner’s View.”

Click on “Add Photos.”

The homeowner can then delete them one by one.

For the exterior shots, Zillow uses images from Google Maps. In some areas, it adds its own photos taken from the sidewalk or the street, according to a company statement. It may also use publicly available photos taken by your city or town assessor’s office, the company said.

The new algorithm also includes real-time data for homes listed for sale and includes listing prices. The algorithms also will indicate how many days the properties have been on the market.

The Zestimate now has a median error rate of less than 2 percent for homes listed for sale.

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