Tampa Bay housing market on fire....still, in 2015! (St. Petersburg, Clearwater: foreclosures, neighborhoods)

[housingcrashsurvivor]

Originally Posted by BucFan

curious what the thoughts are about Zillow.com's estimated prices - are they relatively accurate or off the mark as far as value for homes?

I've been looking at that. Generally it seems best for looking at areas more so than individual houses. For houses it doesn't know the condition of each nor the character of a neighborhood.

Also where it screws up is in which "sales" to count because it seems to include exchanges of property which were not at arms length, also deeds kept in a family or put in trust, at which time a value is declared for county purposes and Zillow counts that as a sale. Then it uses that in figuring the rest of the neighborhood. I wrote them on one "I don't think you can buy that house for the $90k you put down as the sale." They didn't care. Just left it as they found it.

The other thing that definitely seems to screw them up is in Florida our SOH values and particularly portability of SOH. They must factor in taxable values. I've noticed in my homesteaded homes (one at a time, of course) in which I've many years of SOH plus I've ported savings one to the other, that my zestimates are always quite a bit lower than neighboring properties which have lower market values. And I've also looked at mine months after selling and yeah, that jumps when the new owner's tax info is computed.

The other thing they do that I don't like is they stick to their guns on zestimates when sales come in very different from their guesswork.

And they fudge numbers to no end to try and make their info look like it makes sense. They revise their own past numbers to make current numbers make more sense. They've no regard for land values and so they'll say a property that sold for $100k is only worth 30k to make the rest of their valuations of existing houses nearby look like they make sense (though to be fair the county does the same).

So some of it is good, some of it odd. I like it for the record it keeps of sales. Some trending info is interesting. They do also try to track various metrics like price to rent ratios and so if you know what your home might rent for you can derive an approximate zestimate from that number yourself. But what I also find odd is that their zestimates don't necessarily match their price to rent ratios and that again could be lack on info on individual houses, areas, etc.

I just checked my zestimate with their price to rent ratio for my area and their zestimate is low by 30% easy based just on their own contradictory info.

[The Villages Guy]

Originally Posted by BucFan

curious what the thoughts are about Zillow.com's estimated prices - are they relatively accurate or off the mark as far as value for homes?

Hit or miss. Just outdated sq ft comps.

[Concert D Major]

What does SOH stand for?

[EngGirl]

I agree on Zillow estimate prices being hit or miss. The matter of fact 99% house I was checking there are estimated too high. That's why they are on the market for long months.

[Pragmaticus]

Originally Posted by Concert D Major

What does SOH stand for?

Save our home.

[Irishiis49]

My son just found a home in the Crescent Lake section of St.Pete...it was put on the market in the morning...he saw it at 2pm and made a full price offer on the spot...it was accepted...he had been looking for over 6 months...anything in about four areas near downtown are selling so quickly that if you don't act fast and make a strong offer you lose...which happened to him a few times...I can't speak to anywhere else in Tampa Bay...

[housingcrashsurvivor]

How accurate is Zillow’s Zestimate? Not very, says one Washington-area agent. - The Washington Post
...we compared the results of the March 2014 research to that of our September 2012 research. In 2012, we researched 280 properties, and we were able to find a Zestimate for all 280. In the research we just concluded, we were able to find values for all but two of the 500 properties.

...The Zestimate is within 5 percent of the actual sales price roughly half the time. In September 2012, the Zestimate was just as likely to be too low as too high; now, it is roughly twice as likely to be too low.

[Irishiis49]

The zillow for our home is about 100k over what I think it's really worth...but I am in a small sub-division so maybe the data gets skewed...

[bentlebee]

If you have been able to get the info about Zillow as we as real estate professionals get then you may know that Zillow had a huge issue getting feeds from most important websites and MLS which caused their info to even be less accurate then it already was but most non professionals like to use Zillow.

Zillow and many other websites can be a great tool as long as you don't take the info as accurate and most people are aware and are open to getting more accurate info to add to the value given on these websites and together it can be great.

[BucFan]

I think the Zillow is about $15k too high for my place. And agents selling my place receive 6%, so that's another lump of change, so in reality, what Zillow says really means much less in my bank acct when all is said and done after the house is sold.