 All right, joining me now live on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is Zillow CEO Spencer Raskoff and Spencer I know you have a pretty big announcement where someone could win a one million dollar prize Yeah, this estimate is a really accurate computer model about home values, but we think others can help improve it even more So a year ago when we launched this estimate had a 14% error rate to now today a 5% error rate The Zillow prize allows data scientists Computer engineers, statisticians, economists, anybody to compete if you can beat this estimate and prove it then a million dollar prize at the end of the Contest details at zillow.com slash prize a lot of fine prints, of course But I'm excited about what creativity and innovation that could unleash from others working on this same problem that we've been working on for ten years All right, but this estimate also includes artificial intelligence. So what do you need humans helping you out for? Well, you need humans to type to tell the robots what to do So I mean you're right AI has dramatically improved this estimate and cloud as well So, you know ten years ago the the computational power that was going to this estimate was I mean It was just on a couple dozen servers that we owned today It's all in the cloud So we're able to use thousand some can sometimes tens of thousands of computers millions of different models and that burst computing on all these Interconnected cloud machines Dramatically improves this estimate. I mean the role of AI very very very important So we were an early leader in AI, you know five to ten years ago But so much has happened with voice recognition and self-driving cars and so many other AI technologies We think someone out there is working on something that that has a technology that can be applied to this estimate challenge So that's an assessment problem and they should participate in this contest All right, so I from the one million dollar prize. Do they get a job if they do something really cool? Yeah, I guess so we hadn't thought about that I guess I thought the million dollar prize would be would be a better, you know better better motivation, but you're right Sure. Yes, they also get a job. Okay, that's breaking news here on the street Job if you win the prize yes The other thing I want to say is anyone who's sort of living under rock and doesn't know what this estimate is You can basically go to any Address and it'll tell you what it's worth. Yeah I mean the the idea of this estimate is we have a computer opinion about every home in the country So, you know my house is on Zillow with this estimate your house on Zillow, you know Everybody's house has this estimate and it's really valuable. It's useful for buyers and sellers, but it's just a starting point, right? It's it's an estimate. It's always going to be somewhat imperfect even with you know, even though I expect this prize will improve accuracy more It's always going to be a starting point a real estate agent Or is always going to help you be more accurate and honestly what a house is worth is what a buyer will pay for it At the end of the day, that's what a house is truly worth. All right We should just note that there is a class action lawsuit against the accuracy of this estimate So there is a lawsuit. I mean prominent companies always get sued all the time for everything It's there's no merit to lawsuit and I'm confident that it won't be an issue But it is true that you know somebody has sued us. All right. Well, we just wanted to point that out Let's also talk about housing prices while you're here. I mean when you look at the market overall nationwide It's really hard hard to believe that there was a recession ten years ago We're back at peak value. So home values peak to know seven huge recession We're back in a lot of cities past peak now the good news before you start saying oh This is a bubble, you know the good news is the last peak in 0708 was built on a foundation of sand And that sand foundation was a credit bubble about 10 million people got mortgages that really shouldn't have gotten mortgages Today the reason we're back at peak value is not because of a credit bubble. It's because of an inventory shortage They're just not enough homes out there to buy the the existing home sales data came out today It was down month over month. It was barely up year-over-year just not enough inventory It's a seller's market if you've been thinking about listing your home now is a good time because there are a lot of buyers by Demand far exceeds supply. All right now the Federal Reserve is of course looking to raise interest rates two more times This year does that help the market in the sense that it gets people who are sitting on the sidelines to kind of come in and say Let me buy a home get a mortgage down before it becomes too expensive. You know mortgage rates have been so low for so long I tend to think that most most of that behavior has already has already worked its way through the system So we don't see much impact right now at mortgage rate levels that they're at with respect to housing In fact, even when the Fed if and when the Fed raises rates and mortgage rates go up a little bit We don't think it will impact housing very much right now. Can you give us your opinion on the millennial home buyer? We know they've been a little bit late to the game to really pull the trigger late to the game But they're at the party. So, you know millennials now make up around I think 46% or so of all home buyers So they are a huge part of the market the biggest demographic believe it or not. So it's not true the millennials don't buy homes They do And actually we just launched a new brand called real estate comm. It's another Brand inside the Zillow group family of brands real estate comm focuses exclusively on millennial home buyers And one of the ways they do that is they let home shoppers millennial or otherwise Shopped by down payment and monthly Monthly cost. So if you think about it, I mean, it's pretty abstract to say, oh, I can buy a 200,000 to 250,000 dollar home Like what does that really mean? Most people know how much money they have available for down payment How much money they can borrow from their parents and how much their rent is? And so real estate comm is the only real estate site that lets you actually shop the way most people think Which is down payment plus monthly and there'll be other initiatives that real estate comm launches to focus on millennials That's the first one the site's been up for about a week. And it's the rule of thumb still 20% down on a home Yeah, there's not even any real a thumb anymore But yeah for if you want a 30 year fixed then you're probably gonna need 20% down But they're FHA loans that are won something percent down So there are a lot of creative ways to finance a good advice to a home buyer is get pre-approved Basically, you shouldn't even really start thinking about shopping for a home before you talk to a mortgage lender And you should research that online And you should also research hiring a real estate agent online You probably wouldn't go to a restaurant or book a hotel room without reading reviews And you shouldn't hire a real estate agent or a mortgage lender without reading reviews All right before we wrap it is college graduation season. So do you have any advice for the class of 2017? I guess my best career advice for a graduate would be when you're in a job Look at the person ten years your future. So, you know, thanks yourself. Do I want that person's whole package there? Not just their compensation. Everyone always looks at compensation But but their job their title the respect they have in the community the type of work that they do their work life balance Their relationship with family and friends if you don't want that to be your life Well, then switch, you know switch careers switch jobs I know that's I've done that several times and it's been really it's been really valuable for me some great advice Spencer Raskoff CEO of Zillow. Thank you for joining us. Thank you