Zillow unveils new advice feature

Zillow.com today is unveiling a new online advice section where homeowners can ask questions about everything from home improvement to local schools to whether now is a good time to refinance.

"With almost 12 million mortgages underwater, American homeowners are going to be needing some good real estate advice," writes  Zillow's David Gibbons in a blog post on the new feature.

Zillow Advice -- as the new service is called -- combines the company's Home Q&A and real estate discussion forums into one tab where people have the ability to ask questions directly to the community. The site already attracts about 40,000 user-submitted contributions each day.

I asked a question this evening about whether to refinance now or wait until early next year, something my wife and I have actually been talking about. Within 30 minutes of posting my question, I got this response from an Amber Rue: "Rates are great right now, no need to wait.   There are many factors to consider; your current rate, do you have a prepayment penalty, how long do you plan on living in your home.  Now is a great time to refinance."

That's helpful advice, but I would like the ability to ask a follow up question of this expert since her response brought up other key points.

The Q&A concept is not a new one, since San Francisco rival Trulia has offered an advice section on its Web site for a number of months where people can ask specific questions.

The latest offering by Zillow is simply another attempt by the heavily-funded online real estate startup to drive usage by tapping the contributions of the community. It also is a way for real estate professionals to connect with users of the site, with those who answer questions in a accurate and timely manner receiving points that go towards a "Local Expert" badge.

Zillow says that it attracted an average of 5.4 million unique visitors for the months of September, October and November, with the company noting that traffic is up about 44 percent over the same period last year.

Interestingly, Compete.com shows a dip in unique visitors for both Zillow and Trulia in the past month. It appears that Trulia -- which came close to surpassing Zillow earlier this year -- has taken a bigger dive with its traffic in recent months, according to the Compete data.