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When my house was for sale the Zillow site was way off and there were errors as well. Showed my house was on a
slab when in fact the house had a full basement.
Zillow tends to undervalue everything. It is a disadvantage for sellers. It does tend to reflect a downward or upward trend, though, when I tended to follow specific properties.
Strangest phenomenon that I've observed is that when a house is listed for say, $1000000. Then it is removed/relisted for a higher price, say $1.2M, the ZEstimate value goes up. Very weird.
My county's assessor can't even get an accurate value, and they have all the data about the houses and do drivebys every few years to make sure the house is still being lived in and at least minimally maintained, and have access to MLS, and are familiar with the local trends. How in the world do you think Zillow could get anywhere close to an accurate number, without doing or knowing any of those things.
I've been told that they basically figure the average price per zip code and then make adjustments from there based on the size of the house. So if you are in a zip code (which can be quite large in some areas) with a lot of nicer houses, your value could be skewed a lot higher than it should be, and vice versa. The smaller and less diverse your zip code, the more accurate your estimate is likely to be.
A contractor bought two lots about 25 feet apart and built two identical buildings, one on each lot. Same floor plan, same sq footage, same lot size; the only difference is the exterior color - one is white with beige trim and the other is beige with white trim. In other words, these are twins buildings. This is in SF.
Zillow zestimate shows one is worth $1.4 millions and the other one is worth $925k.
Status:
"I didn't do it, nobody saw me"
(set 19 days ago)
Location: Ocala, FL
6,499 posts, read 10,411,932 times
Reputation: 7967
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregm
Although that doesn't stop a buyer from throwing in your face.
And I would just as easily throw it back in their face that Zestimates are garbage. If they wanted they could pay for a real appraisal which would actually carry some weight.
The range isn't even right on mine. It says my house is worth about $113k, with a range from $90-125k. I work in a real estate office, with MLS access, and have run the comps, and my house is currently worth about $140k, or about 24% higher than the Zestimate, and about 12% higher than the top end of their range. So no, not really very close.
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