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Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
13,073 posts, read 7,511,991 times
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From our experience with bare land acreage (mid Valley Oregon) and in high market areas (Seattle region), Zestimates are just that, estimate s. You need to be on the ground and use an experience d RE agent. In both cases, our RE agent s said that they would be guessing because there were no good comps available. You bid or ask until you get responses.
I fully agree and have been advocating a DoNotZestimate 'Opt Out' as a minimum requirement for the last 7 years since I discovered a fundamental geo-mapping error on the location of my home in discussions with Zillow about why the Zestimate on my home was 20% lower than the homes across the street which were mapped correctly. The attitude from Zillow executives that this was a First Amendment issue intrigued me more than the inaccurate Zestimate itself.
In the dialogue they admitted there was an error but point blank refused to correct or delete the inaccurate Zestimate saying that it was impossible for any manual intervention with the Zestimate algorithm. The smell of Zillow BS was nauseating and the penny soon dropped that Zestimates were nothing more than a controversial gimmick to attract users to the Zillow website. That may have been a good approach in Zillows early days but now that it has matured into the the most popular 'real estate' website it highlights the need for our elected representatives to wake up to the AVM influences on their voters single largest investment ie their home, and the damage that companies like Zillow can inflict when imposing inaccurate Zestimates that impose misery and potential financial damage on millions of homeowners.
In the last few months the Zestimate on my home miraculously increased close the the true market value, but then it fell back substantially with some mysterious Zillow restatement with a $20K fall in 30 days. When I look back at my contributions to the debate on Zillow I still feel I am on the 'right side' which will eventually win the debate - but I would say that wouldn't I
We focus too much on Zillow just because they made AVM Abuse mainstream with clever branding of Zestappraisals.
There are plenty of other actors playing the pop appraisal game: Real Estate Site Pop Appraisal Values?
AVM abuse is a sorry practice that needs to be addressed across the spectrum, with a legislative/regulatory net that will catch all of them, including Z.
Rather than an "Opt-Out," I would propose an "Opt-IN" that would require annual renewal by current property owners.
An "Opt-In" that would expire immediately when a property changes hands.
But, I would settle for an "Opt-Out," as preferable to the current practices of misrepresentation without permission.
I propose that anyone accessing a pop appraisal should have to click through disclaimers and warnings before seeing a number, and that the valuation history should be directly below the valuation, and the comps be presented.
I propose sites present an open API for their pop appraisals.
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