Zillow.com??? (sales, real estate, condo)

[HomlessTraveler]

I am a "property virgin" as they say on HGTV and am looking to purchase my first home.

I have been looking online at all the different sites such as zillow to try to do as much investigative work as possible on my own. I found a house I like with an asking price in the 340K range. Zillow.com on the other hand has an estimated value for the same home at 280K based on last years taxes!

How do I make sense of this? Do I come in with a low offer? Is the seller unrealistic about the value or is Zillow not an exact science and off in this estimate?

Thanks for any advice or input

[bayarea-girl]

Zillow is not a good source of information. Your realtor should pull up comps in the area you are interested in, that should give you a pretty good idea of what to ask for. Also, don't listen to the agents in terms of what price you should offer. They want the sell and don't care about you. More than likely you should be able to ask for less than the asking price if it has been up for a long time and due to the economy you can do so as well.

[coolbay]

I agree with bayarea girl. Your relator can give you the recent sales and other information in the area you're interested. This should not stop you doing online research on your own.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by HomlessTraveler

I am a "property virgin" as they say on HGTV and am looking to purchase my first home.

I have been looking online at all the different sites such as zillow to try to do as much investigative work as possible on my own. I found a house I like with an asking price in the 340K range. Zillow.com on the other hand has an estimated value for the same home at 280K based on last years taxes!

How do I make sense of this? Do I come in with a low offer? Is the seller unrealistic about the value or is Zillow not an exact science and off in this estimate?

Thanks for any advice or input

To add to what the others say -- a great place to look is propertyshark.com... they can give you a lot more comprehenive information on specific properties.

[PeixeGato]

Originally Posted by bayarea-girl

Zillow is not a good source of information. Your realtor should pull up comps in the area you are interested in, that should give you a pretty good idea of what to ask for. Also, don't listen to the agents in terms of what price you should offer. They want the sell and don't care about you. More than likely you should be able to ask for less than the asking price if it has been up for a long time and due to the economy you can do so as well.

Is there a reason that Zillow is not a good resource? Do they do (or not do) something that makes them unreliable? I realize that you can't rely on any one source, but is there a reason that Zillow shouldn't be included on your due diligence list?

I have no personal interest in Zillow, I'm just curious about what other people think of the site.

Thanks.

[clongirl]

Originally Posted by PeixeGato

Is there a reason that Zillow is not a good resource? Do they do (or not do) something that makes them unreliable? I realize that you can't rely on any one source, but is there a reason that Zillow shouldn't be included on your due diligence list?

I have no personal interest in Zillow, I'm just curious about what other people think of the site.

Thanks.

It's been my experience that the properties are way overvalued or way undervalued on this site.

We sold a house during the last year of the peak of real estate for the area..zillow still says it's worth nearly what we sold it for. Uh, they didn't seem to take the whole bubble bursting and high unemployment into account within the area. There's no way our old house can still be nearly double what we paid way back in 2003.

I might trust the site more within a new housing estate where it's easy to evaluate the houses since they're all pretty much the same. But in many communities in the immediate Bay Area, there are just far too many nuances in houses on the same street..(all built at different times, you might have a Victorian house right next to a condo right next to something that might be uninhabitable..yet all similar in sq footage). It would be impossible to have a computer program like Zillow evaluate all of the nuances that can only be determined my human beings.

[artemis78]

The Zillow methodology is just too rough to give a very good gauge of value, especially in urban areas where housing quality varies a lot and neighborhoods can change block-by-block. Zillow was a lot more accurate IMHO during the boom because property was turning over quickly enough that there were lots of comps for their system to pick up. Today it's not uncommon for a small neighborhood to go a year with only a property or two turning over, so bias increases and the numbers can be way, way off. (And I agree, I've seen it be ridiculously high as well as ridiculously low, so be cautious of that.)

Property Shark is a cool site, but not useful for values---it only lists assessed values, which in California are usually based on the prior sale unless the property owner has requested a reduction. So it can tell you a home listed for $300K is "assessed" at $600K because that's what it last sold for---not too helpful, and very confusing for people who come from normal states where assessments are a little more relevant.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by PeixeGato

Is there a reason that Zillow is not a good resource? Do they do (or not do) something that makes them unreliable? I realize that you can't rely on any one source, but is there a reason that Zillow shouldn't be included on your due diligence list?

I have no personal interest in Zillow, I'm just curious about what other people think of the site.

Thanks.

Zillow is as someone else said -- over values or under values a property. Right now Zillow ranks my house in the 200K range when I know for a fact it's the WAY low 100K range.

Originally Posted by artemis78

Property Shark is a cool site, but not useful for values---it only lists assessed values, which in California are usually based on the prior sale unless the property owner has requested a reduction. So it can tell you a home listed for $300K is "assessed" at $600K because that's what it last sold for---not too helpful, and very confusing for people who come from normal states where assessments are a little more relevant.

Property Shark does give an average for the zip code somewhere on the page -- near the bottom I think. That's a pretty good guage of the area, but absolutely not the most accurate. House valuation is far more an art than a science....

[PeixeGato]

Originally Posted by artemis78

Zillow was a lot more accurate IMHO during the boom because property was turning over quickly enough that there were lots of comps for their system to pick up. Today it's not uncommon for a small neighborhood to go a year with only a property or two turning over, so bias increases and the numbers can be way, way off. (And I agree, I've seen it be ridiculously high as well as ridiculously low, so be cautious of that.)

Yeah, most of these sites popped up during the expansion of the bubble, so they did have a lot of recent sales to base their valuations on. Now that sales volume has slowed to a crawl, I guess its modeling isn't nearly as accurate. That sucks, because I'm sure a lot of potential home buyers are using it to check listing prices, which can be a problem for the people selling those houses.

[coolbay]

Originally Posted by clongirl

...... It would be impossible to have a computer program like Zillow evaluate all of the nuances that can only be determined my human beings.

Well, computer can not think. It needs lot of inputs from humans to work or follow market trend.

Zillow needs real data feed and good data analysis based on regular real estates changes.

You get confidence with any source when something happens which is close to your expectation and in order to meet that expection you need some reliable source. It may not be possible to achieve 100% but to gain certain level of confidence, lot of research is involved. This is where I think sites like Zillow or other sources lacking.