Zillow claim "We just dramatically improved Zestimate accuracy"

[LAB6120]

Mine went up about $60k which is more accurate with what homes are currently selling for.

[emm74]

Until recently, Zillow was valuing my new(er) construction home for about 50% of what I had paid at the end of 2014. It inched up slightly but was still far below what I had paid, let alone the actual market value. I'm in a large area of new construction, so plenty of comps but for whatever reason, they were obviously using comps for something completely unrelated to my actual home. I hadn't looked at for a while but checked it out this morning and now it's pretty much the market value - a few thousand above the appraisal I had done a couple of months ago for a re-fi.

But the funny thing is that the old history of the ridiculously low value is gone completely. It now goes back to my date of purchase in 2014 and has reasonably accurate values (per the pre-closing appraisal, value had gone up about 8% from the date I signed the contract to the actual closing). There was one weird peak in December 2015, where it spiked up almost 50K more than it's valuing right now. I have no idea what that was about, but definitely not realistic.

I'm not selling any time soon, but I guess I'm still glad they've adjusted the records to reflect a more accurate valuation. But still shows that despite the popularity of the website, the actual information remains worth what people pay for it - nothing.

[TimtheGuy]

Originally Posted by emm74

Until recently, Zillow was valuing my new(er) construction home for about 50% of what I had paid at the end of 2014. It inched up slightly but was still far below what I had paid, let alone the actual market value. I'm in a large area of new construction, so plenty of comps but for whatever reason, they were obviously using comps for something completely unrelated to my actual home. I hadn't looked at for a while but checked it out this morning and now it's pretty much the market value - a few thousand above the appraisal I had done a couple of months ago for a re-fi.

But the funny thing is that the old history of the ridiculously low value is gone completely. It now goes back to my date of purchase in 2014 and has reasonably accurate values (per the pre-closing appraisal, value had gone up about 8% from the date I signed the contract to the actual closing). There was one weird peak in December 2015, where it spiked up almost 50K more than it's valuing right now. I have no idea what that was about, but definitely not realistic.

I'm not selling any time soon, but I guess I'm still glad they've adjusted the records to reflect a more accurate valuation. But still shows that despite the popularity of the website, the actual information remains worth what people pay for it - nothing.

At what time did the county adjust the value of your property?

[emm74]

Originally Posted by TimtheGuy

At what time did the county adjust the value of your property?

Zillow zestimate wasn't related to the county tax assessment. County had appropriate comps based on all the other new construction sales in my immediate vicinity, but Zillow was still showing me at 50% even compared to neighbors. Tax basis adjusts in June, I think, but I know I've checked Zillow more recently than that and they still had the crazy low value. I'd say this change came sometime in the past 2ish months, as I doubt it's been longer than that since I took a look at Zillow.

I still think the oddest part is that they wiped the history clean for that 18 months plus of the 50% value, and now are pretending they were reasonably accurate all along.

[LifeIsGood01]

It's not accurate. There is a tiny home near me that has a zestimate $5k under mine and it's much smaller and basically a tear down and would need a lot of work to get it livable. There is also a home that sold a week ago for $150K that they zesty at $125K.