It’s a $1 million algorithm and it’s more accurate than that one of the most polarizing pieces of technology in the industry.

Team ChaNJestimate was announced Wednesday as the winner of the $1 million Zillow Zestimate challenge, with an algorithm that beat the company’s own baseline by 13 percent. With the algorithm, Zillow expects their Zestimate’s error rate to fall from 4.5 percent to below four percent.

“People are incredibly passionate about their home and understanding its value, and we are amazed by the winning team’s hard work the past two years to make the Zestimate even more precise,” Stan Humphries, chief analytics officer and creator of the Zestimate, said in a statement.

“We’ve been on a 13-year journey making the Zestimate more accurate, and hosting Zillow Prize allowed us to invite thousands of brilliant data scientists from around the world to join us on this journey.

Errol Samuelson, the chief industry development officer at Zillow said the contest sort of reminded him of the early says of being a software engineer.

“Back then, there was a little bit of a culture like the wild west, and you didn’t necessarily have formal training to do something,” Samuelson said. “Data scientist feels like that early frontier still. It’s still a little bit of the wild west. You can be a solo artist in Japan. You can be three guys on the internet and win a $1 million prize. I like the spirit of it.”

The Zestimate is polarizing in the industry, with many feeling that it undermines the job of a real estate agents. Samuelson doesn’t feel that’s the case. He said real estate agents can take the Zestimate, show the consumer and show them why it’s not exact.

“Agents can use that and say, ‘that’s why you need a human because no matter how good the algorithm is, there’s always going to nuances that you’re going to need a human being to say the algorithm would never pick up on this, but let me tell you why this matters,'” Samuelson said. “Good agents use it as a way to prove their value.”

Samuelson said some people get frustrated with the Zestimate for two reasons. They don’t feel it’s accurate or they don’t believe there should be any online estimates.

“If you look at the way consumers think these days, a lot of times, they’re looking to do research on their own first,” Samuelson said. “And they’re still going to talk to an agent.”

Email Patrick Kearns

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