House I want to offer on was sold only 2 months at a fraction of its current asking price (appraisal, mortgage)

[Fiss240]

This is in correlation to my previous thread about buying a triplex. The property I would like to put an offer on is listed for $300,000 but zillow reports it was sold just this last April for $175,000. In addition, both two properties on the left and one on the right were all also sold in april for $190,000-220,000. They are all rental triplexes.

I guess my first question is, are public records of previous sales always a good indication of market value? Like if parents sell a property to sons/daughters at a discount price, or multiple properties are sold as a package, that all still gets recorded even though its not the same as an individual property's market value, right? How would I even tell? The other three properties all seem to have sold on the same exact day, which makes me believe they may have been some sort of multi-property deal.

Second question is, how low is too low when throwing out a low-ball offer I would be nice to save 50 or 60 grand (who would miss out on that?).

[beachouse]

I would check with the town to verify the sales price.

If they truly sold at those prices, I wouldn't pay a huge amount more unless the other properties were trashed , and thats why they were cheap.

They also might cause appraisal problems for your mortgage.

Sometimes if they were bank owned they are sold cheaper too.

[DMenscha]

Zillow is never wrong. Call a local title company to find out what it actually sold for.

[Racelady88]

My observation of Zillow is that is uses the real "public information" available and uses whatever the mortgage amount recorded at the courthouse is for the sold price. I have bought my last 3 houses with cash and Zillow never picks up the sale at all.

In one case not onlu did it fail to show my house, but my neighbor put 50% down and financed the other 50%. Zillow showed the sale price of my neighbor's house for the amount of the loan and not the actual sale amount.

If you are looking for that kind of info check with the County Clerk or the Property Appraiser in the county the properties are located in.