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I have mixed feelings about Zillow. It's kind of a cool tool for browsing, but I question the value estimates. The zestimate on our home is off by about 100k. There is no sales info listed.
It's a "guesstimate" at best...sometimes close, sometimes wildly off.
For some reason they've always "zestimated" our current house way lower than what we paid for it, even though I know we didn't overpay based on comps and other factors. Oh well.
I have mixed feelings about Zillow. It's kind of a cool tool for browsing, but I question the value estimates. The zestimate on our home is off by about 100k. There is no sales info listed.
Definitely. Here in TX, the state does not provide sales information so it goes off of county tax appraisal info. It's waaaay off market value.
My sold price showed up about a month after our close on the site. I don't mind since it is public knowledge and posted in your local papers as well. What's funny is when we bought our house and it showed in the paper we were almost double the no.2 home sale in the town, lol. This is not because we overpaid but we just bought a house that was more expensive in the first place. We actually got a good deal and paid almost $40k below asking, they lost money on the deal and we ended up with $15k in equity when we signed.
Our house on Zillow is showing a sold price that is significantly higher than what we paid -- almost $80k higher. Clearly that information is not coming from the public record. Also, the addition of this inflated sale price hasn't raised our Zestimate, which is about $80k lower than what the house appraised at.
The new Zillow is fairly accurate. At one time they had my home valued at 750K, at the peak of the housing boom it might have gone for 425K and now they have it at 378K which is about where it should be. I think they had a lot of complaints and finally started getting realistic. I still wouldn't trust them if I was selling or buying though.
Sold price on my previous house is $80,000 below what we sold it for and it's marked as listed in 2010 though it was listed for and went on rent and we only listed it for sale in 2012 after 2 year lease. They can seriously misguide next buyer into thinking that house was unsellable for 2 years and was sold for so little so there is something wrong with it. New owner is trying to sort it out with Zillow.
I live in an area where sales are public info - the "SOLD" price on Zillow is correct, although it takes some time after the sale for the info to become public and for the price to be posted. Until then the property just shows as "listing removed." When the price becomes public, a new line is added to the listing that says "Sold price" and the date the sale became official.
The Zestimate, on the other hand, has been running at least 10-15% below the actual sales price. The house we recently bought was initially listed for about 35% over the Zestimate (which was unreasonable, given comps, and it sat, without offers, for more than a year). When we finally looked at it, the ask price was about 20% over. We ended up paying about 10% over the Zestimate price and the appraisal was about 15% over.
I had about 15 houses on my watch list. I watched, over a period of the last 3 months, as they gradually sold and the Zestimate averaged about 12% low, compared to the actual selling price. The exceptions would be the houses that were REOs, some of which were in really sad shape. Those went for at or below the Zestimate.
Zestimates will never be accurate because they will never walk through the inside of the house to compare all those things that drive price differences between homes in a neighborhood.
The Sold prices have been on our listings for quite some time. I think states that don't disclose sales price may be the ones seeing changes, not sure how Zillow is getting the price.
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