Zillow's Zestimates Are Not the Gospel!!! (sales, real estate, 2015)

[breakingbad]

According to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff, Zestimates are "a good starting point" but nationwide Zestimates have a "median error rate" of about 8%.
Buyers and Sellers make sure you hire a real estate agent, or team that will take time to find out what the value of the subject property is in the current market. Your Realtor should spend a lot of time doing market analysis and present you with the information they have gathered so you can make an informed decision when pricing your home.

Here is an interesting article:
Inaccurate Zillow 'Zestimates' a source of conflict over home prices - LA Times

[Ashley Tauzier]

Oh my goodness yes. The information on Zillow and Trulia are both so inaccurate. Besides missing the mark on home values, the listings are not updated. The calls I've gotten on listings, 9 out of 10 times are already under contract.

[Major Barbara]

They frequently err on the actual state of the home as well, since they spend $0 on trying to find and correct errors. They apparently hope that owners will do the correcting for them, but unless a home has been put on the market, there is no reason to do that. It will just draw the attention of the tax man.

[patriot201]

Several years ago, I was refinancing my home, and the Zestimate on my home was approximately $40,000 less than the value of the appraisal. It was also about $50,000+ less than the most recent sales price of my identical model on an adjacent street (I know that isn't an accurate measure because value is different than sales price and each home has different upgrades, issues, lots, etc., but it is still not generally THAT far off.).

Now that I've refinanced, the Zestimate is closer to what I expect my home is actually worth. It is probably still a little off, but not nearly as much as it was.

[FCNova]

What surprised me was a mortgage officer in a previous refi quoted the zestimate when talking numbers. I corrected her on what the actual appraisal would probably come in at(much lower than the zestimate). She said there was another proprietary estimating tool her company used that was about in the same range. I told her uhhh no I know what townhomes in my neighborhood were worth. Of course the appraisal came in where I said and her GFE was garbage. There is no algorithm that can replicate a human pulling comps and accurating gauging home value.

[Zack]

Zillow and Trulia (and any other software) are simply algorithms that compute house values based on various inputs such as county sales records, tax appraisals, and other public information. There is no way they can account for nuance differences in homes that an agent or an appraiser is going to see; e.g. differences between poor condition and remodeled homes, quality of views, floor plans, noises, etc.

The only way those systems would improve is if they scoured data on every home which would literally involve visiting all of them inside and out, and actually recording what is there. Such an endevour would be extremely difficult and expensive; think Google Streetview times a 100.

[thatdurncat13]

Zillow also will say a house is "off market". Funny because we just went and looked at 4 of them. Very much still on the market.

[stan4]

They have been off consistently by hundreds of thousands in our area.
Hundreds of thousands.
Which makes them worthless.
You could do better walking by and just guessing.

[TheWatchmen]

Huh. Haven't checked Zillow in a while. I just checked on my house, and my neighbor's house.

My neighbor edited the facts of his home since that last I checked maybe a year ago, and now his "zestimate" reads more than $150,000 more than my home. His basement is more finished than ours, but our homes are nearly the same. The were built by the same builder, same year, and have the same footprint. His has one more bathroom than ours, but that is the only real difference between our homes.

There is just no way that having 500 more finished square feet and a bathroom adds up to $150k, particularly in this neighborhood. I really hope that a true home appraisal wouldn't count below-grade finished square footage as the same as above grade.

His home facts say that he has 3500 square feet, but 1/3 of that is his basement. None of our basement square footage, finished or unfinished, is included in our home facts.

[Ashley Tauzier]

So some insider information! Lol when I calculate a Comparitive Market Analysis the adjustments I normally make are 5,000 for half bath and 10,000 for a full bath. For square footage I normally average an adjustment at about $40 a sq ft for total finished sq ft. If any of you regulars want to know the value of your house just let me know. I'll calculate it out for you guys.