Notice anything about Zillow?

Robroy · July 2008

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 · July 2008

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 · July 2008

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 · July 2008

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

deejayoh · July 2008

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.

Notice anything about Zillow?

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