Reason #1 You Don't Want to Use Zillow, Trulia, etc

[elliott01]

Originally Posted by mgdriver74

We bought our house on May 5th for $295,000. It is on Zillow as having sold that date for $45,000. That may have been the lot price 12 years ago but certainly not what we paid for it.

We had the same thing happen. Shows a 4/3 on almost an acre for $49,900. In your dreams. The nearest we could figure was as you did that it was the cost of the land before the house was built.

[BoBromhal]

Originally Posted by MikeJaquish

ListHub no longer maintains your Z and T listings. Like Sean says, it is up to you.

My photo tour vendor handles those syndications for me, but I need to check them.

our firm has an agreement with Zillow in place.

[BoBromhal]

Originally Posted by NYCresident2014

I'm in the market right now to purchase a home, and between all of the sites, I find Zillow to be the absolute most user friendly. Trulia is a close second and has a few features that I use from time to time as well. Realtor.com is missing a lot of the useful data found on Zillow and Trulia, and RedFin is terrible.

I keep seeing threads on here, posted by realtors mostly, bashing Zillow. I can only guess that this is because they aren't placing themselves in the shoes of their buyers and figuring out what it is that buyers actually want.

Are there some old listings? Sure. But even on realtor.com, there are listings that are for all intents and purposes "sold". I recently called a listing agent on a home I saw (on all three sites) and there were multiple offers and they weren't accepting any new offers. Zillow's fault? Nope.

Agents are just struggling to remain relevant in the age of openly accessible listing data. And honestly, they are really starting to sound whiny about it.

When I say "sold" I am using the classic definition of settled, done, recorded, and owned by somebody else. Not just "Under Contract".

When I say "#1 reason" and post it in the main Real Estate Forum and not the "RE Professionals" Subforum, I did that for a reason. Not to get huzzahs from fellow agents, but to caution and inform consumers.

Realtors/agents use the MLS to get our information, and our MLS' are the most accurate information. Everything is syndicated/fed/update from the various MLS'.

86%+ of Buyers use an agent. So for 86% of Buyers, they're (eventually at least) getting accurate information from their agent. The other 14%? 1/2 of them are buying directly from friends and relatives, and the other 1/2 think untimely and inaccurate information is great. Or being at a disadvantage because it's not.

[BoBromhal]

Originally Posted by MikeJaquish

The agent may be legally or civilly liable for failing to maintain an ad.
Zillow's poor performance is probably not a defense.

5 years ago, this was a real concern for me. Now, since no one seems to care about the practice, I figure what the hey. "Ignorance of the law" seems to have become a viable claim