Is Zillow accurate at all or a total waste? (Plano: sales, real estate)

[jamaicabound60565]

Is Zillow at all accurate or is it a total waste?

I know you obviously wouldn't use zillow to get comps, for appraisals or anything like that but does it even give you a rough idea of what your house is worth?

In my neighborhood and some neighborhoods I'm familiar with the prices they list are anywhere from about 30k to 60k overpriced. Also, this is not a diff of 30k in a neighborhood where houses are 600k, this is 300-60k diff in a neighborhood hwere houses sell for abuot 130 give or take.

It is a nice tool to see what other properties have sold for around you and what others are listed for but as for their appraisals it seems there's no rhyme or reason to them and that they are not accurate?

[ajolotl]

In terms of generating credible comps, in the city I can say that it is more or less a total waste. The story is probably different in areas that are pretty homogeneous, where housing quality is easy to quantify and neighborhoods don't go from upperclass to battle zones in a matter of blocks. In places like Hyde Park and Beverly (where I have used it) you'd do better throwing darts at a table of random numbers.

[chet everett]

I have said this many times -- the lack of anything close to consistency into which INPUTS Zillow gives credibility to in its "secret sauce" makes the thing a TOTAL JOKE and more of a 'parlor game' than anything else. There are hideous inaccuracies even in the way they apply what should be automated sales info feeds from public bodies which gives me ZERO CONFIDENCE in its attention to more nuanced info...

The 'competitors' are no better either -- when a property changes hands in Illinois there are numerous data points that are generated, and the transposition of this info is common. If I wanted to spend the effort to point out how they routinely screw up data that goes to the recorder of deeds, township assesor, various credit bureaus I could easily show how to "fake out" the sales info. Further they have some 'features' that allow anyone with even cursory knowledge of how the sites work to massively distort the "estimates".

Useless as a financial tool. Fun visuals. Maybe a decent way to contact folks that are "thumbing through" looking for real estate related business contacts...

[Rlest8]

Totall agree with the 2 posts above. It is a waste, not accurate, and causes confusion.

[vilmer laktow]

Seems like zillow is pretty high on their zestimates. Of course part of it is the market right now, if we were at the peak of a couple years ago, the prices would be 'gettable', but now I would multiply by .7 or so to get close to reasonable. Zillow has nice navigation, and eventually they do get the sold data updated on most houses, so I like it, with caveats of course.

[earlyretirement]

It's pretty much a waste. It's not accurate at all. It can't factor in things like big ugly power lines in the back yard. I recently looked at a house listed on Realtor.com in Plano, TX 75024 and on Zillow it says it's worth something like $290,000 yet the house price keeps getting lowered every few weeks. It's down to $249,000 today. The thing is that Zillow can't factor in many things in the real world.

It can be interesting to see what they value things at in the neighborhood but you have to take them with a grain of salt. The nice thing is that many times in many properties you can see the property tax information on Zillow but even that can be off.

[efb]

The thing you have to remember though, especially if you are a seller, is that others will use Zillow as the "gospel" if it suits them in the bargaining process. So - like it or not -- it is a factor in real estate sales. That being said, I have noticed that it has no way to account for increases in property value due to desireability of a neighborhood....it seems to be an average of sale prices within a certain area.

[chet everett]

The most basic stuff about legal boundaries / school attendance areas is NOT accurately reflected in their witch's brew. It ain't "about .7 too high" in any uniform way -- it WORSE THAN THROWING DARTS -- some values are far too low, others insanely high. By pure chance one might be close to reality. There is NO VALUE in that!!!

[sgresident]

I think that real estate values are really a moving target. I look at zillow to get a "ballpark" feel for things. It is nice to see what has recently sold in the area vs what people have their homes listed at. However, as anyone knows who is trying to sell something, it is only worth whatever someone is willing to pay. so, it just depends on who is looking! I think if the home values are for an area that is well-established and the homes are all quite similiar, I think the zillow number is fairly accurate; in other cases, who knows!

[airernie]

I've been looking at Zillow for several years and have never felt it was accurate. It has, at least two significant problems. The first is it captures too few sales in an area to create an accurate picture of property values. The second is that if it has no record of a home ever selling, then it has no frame of reference for it's vaue and undervalues the home. I live in a town home and there is no consistency between what Zillow rates those having the same floor plan, size, construction, etc.