On Monday, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano signed SB1291 as ammended into law. This was the bill that caused much discussion here and elsewhere that, in a nutshell, originally attempted to force automated valuation model providers such as Zillow.com to stop providing estimated home valuations to our fine citizens. Also in late June, the AZ Board of Appraisal finally got a clue and rescinded their cease and desist letters previously sent to Zillow.
The bill made it to the Governor's desk on back on June 20. Under Arizona law, the Governor does not have the power of "pocket veto", so barring formal veto (and there were no indications she was considering such a veto), the bill would have passed whether the Governor signed it or not. Sometimes she won't sign a bill to, I suppose, make a statement of sorts. In an attempt to keep the blog as free from politics as possible, I shall refrain from providing my thoughts and feelings of our Governor. Suffice it to say that I'm glad she did the right thing in this case and actually endorsed the bill with her signature.
Zillow President Lloyd Frink has a post about SB1291 passing up at the Zillow blog.
[tag]AZ SB1291, Zillow, AZ Board of Appraisal[/tag]
So I guess HomeGain the original web based free homevaluation tool (1999-2001 and recently relaunched) gets a pass too…
HomeGain.com
Sure HG is included Louis. Interestingly, you don't have my home in your database, yet every other AVM on the planet does. Why would that be?
By the way, your "MLS search" for Gilbert, AZ points to an agents page that returns a 404 error.
I have to say that given my two experiences with the HG site, if I were a consumer, I'd never come back…
Jay that's interesting, what is the address of the home?
I'll check on it for you.
We access the same public records as "every other AVM on the planet" too!
I just checked Homegain's Gilbert arizona mls link http://www.homegain.com/buyer_link/metro_area?hsx… got directed to our buyerlink customer Ron Bodell who displays Gilbert MLS listings.
Jay, please come back and join the five million unique visitors to HomeGain.com that do so every month making it the second most visited real estate site in the country behind realtor.com
Regards
Louis
Louis – I'll send you the address via direct email. I adore my readers, but we do get the occasional nut case stopping by…
I get to Ron's site too when I "drill down" through HomeGain. But it leads me to this page, which returns the 404 error:
http://www.ronsellsarizona.com/bin/web/real_estat…
Here is the path I take to get there: Home page/"Existing Homes and MLS" –> Arizona Homes for Sale –> Phoenix/Mesa Area –> Gilbert –> which returns Ron's 404 page.
I'm an agent Louis, I don't really see much of a need for me to visit Homegain. Do you? (and please, don't try to sell me leads). I do however, have Homegain squarely in my sites to beat you out in local search rankings. You're ahead of me in most, but not by very far… don't slow down… 🙂
I never realzied there was an issue. I always continued to get Zestimates…although I do find them to be off and the degree varies by geography as well.
The internet levels another playing field…good.
Ed – you should subscribe to the Phoenix Real Estate Guy! Then you'll now about these things!! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by.
I don't understand the significance of such a bill.
"The rich get richer and the poorer get poorer"