Zillow demonstrates Zestimate "gimmick" with White House valuation of $295M (square foot, 7%)

[Surbiton]

Zillows self serving publicity gimmick of publishing a 'zestimate' of $294.9M for the White House seems to have backfired. By stating that they used the 'proprietary zestimate algorithm' they raise more questions about the nonsense of zestimates and how unscientific they are.

Value of White House Up 7% in Past Four Years - Yahoo! Finance

If you look at the Zillow description for the White House they have no last sold, price, no tax assessed value, no recent home sales nearby, or any of the key information that Zillow says it needs to calculate a zestimate. So it just demonstrates what many people have always thought - that Zillow just make the zestimates up. So why do they steadfastly refuse to correct obviously inaccurate zestimates when requested to do so by the homeowner?

The DC Real Property Assessment database has 3 separate parcels for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and one can only assume that the White House Tax value is $995,000,000 based in the Lot size, and that the other two parcels are the Treasury Building and The Old executive Office Building and the Tax values are $365m and $399m for the other parcels.

https://www.taxpayerservicecenter.com/RP_Results.jsp


Interesting that Movoto Real Estate have a website called WhiteHouseValue.com which has a valuation of $110m to $115m.

What Would the White House Sell For?

Jason Koitz, the certified fiscal officer and real estate strategist for The Koitz Group, tossed Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed request around the office and came back with two numbers, a listing price and a more realistic sales price.

“I think just based on the size and location; the list price would be in the low $100 million range. It would probably be $110 or $115 (million). This would be an extreme luxury home.”
~ Jason Koitz, The Koitz Group

Realistically, if such a hypothetical can be called that, Koitz said the White House would sell for somewhere between $75 and $80 million, or between $1,364 and $1,455 per square foot.

Of course, finding out how much the White House would cost on the open market is purely academic.
“When you add the historic value to it, the sky’s the limit,” Koitz said. “We could realistic be talking the world’s first billion dollar purchase for a single-family house.”

Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed

So how accurate do you think the two alternative valuations for the White House are? I wonder if President Obama has claimed his home and updated the facts? Looks like someone has entered a whole bunch of information - or was that entered by Zillow CEO as part of his opportunistic publicity stunt in an attempt to get more eyeballs to his website over the MLK holiday weekend?