Notice anything about Zillow?

Robroy

LRR wrote:

Hi all. I've been watching the real estate market and reading this site for a long time now. Have any of you noticed Zillow increasing their estimates lately, even though all other indicators point to lower values? My home search has been narrowed down to a somewhat rural area and their estimates for homes in the area have increased in the last 4 weeks. That's in spite of the fact that homes there are just sitting on the market. It almost seems like agent cheerleading.

Well, my wife and I were checking out my brother-in-laws house in the Phoenix area and Zillow has it valued at $403K, along with most of his neighborhoods homes. They are all pretty much the same. However, two of them are actually for sale, and the asking price on BOTH is ~$290K.

Somethin's up... :?

biliruben

Zillow's been doing goofy things for the last 6 months. In December, my house had a peak Zestimate of around $392K. Now there's no evidence it ever Zillowed over $340K.

Revisionist history.

I don't mind them tweaking their algorithm (in fact I encourage it), but don't go back in time. It's dishonest and confusing.

Markor

Yep, Zillow recalculates its zestimate history, using an algorithm that changes. Two houses sold in my old neighborhood in the last 6 months, including mine; Zillow's zestimate for them is about 15% higher than they sold for.

SeattleMoose

The "Zestimate" is lagging from 3 to 6 months so in a down cycle the "Zestimate" is most likely too high.

deejayoh

I have been tracking a house in Montlake that has a zestimate of $900k. It is on the market for $620k - and probably over priced. I ran comps on every house within a block that sold in the last ~2 years. Eyeballing it, it looked like the zestimate ranged from 20-33% over the sales price at the date of sale on 4 out of the 5 sales.

Clearly, some places they just get it wrong.