Shares of real estate listings website Zillow.com have opened on the NASDAQ at $60 per share, technology blog TechCrunch.com reported, giving the company a $1.6 billion valuation. Zillow priced its initial public offering at $20 per share yesterday, after increasing the pricing of its IPO to $16 to $18 per share. The company raised $69 million in the offering.
Zillow is the third most visited real estate-related site in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, and received 5.36 percent of all real estate traffic in March, up 53 percent from March 2010. However, the company has been seeing losses in net income over the past three years, TechCrunch said.
In the three months ending March 31, Zillow generated revenue of $11.3 million, an increase of 111 percent from the same period in 2010. [more]

When online real estate database Zillow.com modified the formula it uses to estimate the value of some 97.3 million American homes, known as the zestimate, last month, it caused a great deal of distress for homeowners, some of whom saw significant decreases in Zillow’s valuation of their properties.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company, headed by CEO Spencer Rascoff, added 25 million new zestimates, dropping its margin of error from 12 percent to 8.5 percent. Though most adjustments were of 10 percent or less, some, especially in markets with more volatile housing markets, were more dramatic. Zillow says that slightly more zestimates went down than went up, but declined to provide more specific information. [more]

Zillow.com has released a new product called Rent Zestimates, which
determines the estimated monthly rent for more than 90 million homes and
apartments across the United States. “Buyers and renters are not
exclusive categories — many people are considering both options when
shopping for a new home,” Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff said in a
statement. “We created Rent Zestimates to empower people with
information and data to make the right real estate decision for them.”
According to Zillow.com, a recent survey shows two-thirds of current
renters didn’t research fair rent prices before signing their leases. [Sun
Sentinel]

Zillow, the online U.S. home price estimator, is going public, the company’s newly appointed, 34-year-old CEO, Spencer Rascoff, told Bloomberg News. He wouldn’t say how much money would be raised in the company’s initial public offering or when shares would be sold, but he did say that his taking the helm from co-founder Rich Barton was part of the plan. Founded in 2005, the company has raised $87 million in financing and generates revenue from advertisements on Zillow.com and its mobile applications, but has yet to post a net profit. The website attracts 12.5 million visitors each month, the company said. [Bloomberg]

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