Zillow? realtor.com? Get real?
 

We are not buying or selling in either place right now, but I have been fascinated by real estate markets for most of my adult life. Just when I thought I had seen it all — along comes the current insanity.

While I agree with those who say this overall market is different from the big, popped bubble, that does not mean that I think it is sustainable. At some point, buyers will get tired of feeling had and the US market will breathe. (I hope banks do not start handing out HELOCs based on what could turn out to be phantom equity.)

(But TV’s market is different. Potential buyers might feel like they are caught between The Village of Rock and The Village of Hard Place where the buy price is concerned. But no matter what that famous philosopher Mick Jagger told us, a long time ago, time is not on our side — anymore. And, besides, in most cases, the house owned elsewhere is going to sell overpriced. TV marketing knows all this, of course.)

But back to the overall US market. . .

I just now looked at Zillow and at realtor.com to see what their algorithms “think” about what houses we own, and have owned, are worth. On the northern house, both seemed unrealistically high.

How realistic can those sites possibly be? There is no human element involved in the pricing? Are those sites just a starting or stopping point? Are they just pie in the sky? Are they just as often too low on their estimations?

Boomer. . .

(Btw, it is a little weird to look at realtor.com because they do not appear to remove the old pictures from the last time the house was sold. So if you think you miss your old furniture, you might be able to visit it on realtor.com if you listed with the MLS.)

I don't know about realtor.com, but Zillow has detailed information about how they calculate their estimates. Just click on "zestimates" at the bottom of their website and you can see information about how accurate they are, and how their estimates compare to actual sale prices. Some people like to criticize Zillow, but they often forget that it is just an estimate and the real value is what a buyer is willing to pay.

Zillow ranges are so wide they have little use. When a house sells they adjust the Zillow price to it and their algorithms update. Just look at comparable sales on your own

We just sold a house last week. Realtor.com was absurdly low. Zillow was a little high but not by much

We sold our NJ house last month. Realtor.com was also absurdly low, like 25% off our selling price. Zillow was a few thousand low. Our house sold right along with all the comps the realtor pulled, so it was not some ridiculous cash offer 100k over asking. It was over asking, but just about enough to cover the realtor fees.

Zillow is one of the most UNreliable sources for home-buyers ever.

Our house was on the national multi-listing service (MLS) for almost 3 months before Zillow finally acknowledged that it was an active listing. Realtor(dot)com and all the others had it listed just fine, but Zillow hadn't caught up yet.

Sadly, we learned that there were 2 potential buyers who passed our house and tried to find us on Zillow to get more info before calling the agent. Since it wasn't there, they thought it was already sold, and didn't bother. It took us almost a year to sell our home, and we were paying mortgage on a home we had stopped living in and didn't want, for several months at the end.

The only thing I trust Zillow for are the pictures and the addresses themselves.

Zillow
 

As unreliable as they may be, we sold our house because of Zillow in 4 days.

Sold my parent's home on Zillow...........free & easy.

When we refinanced our house was appraised about $50k over Zillow. We are not selling anytime soon. Our Village house has increased about $50k in 2 years.

Yet it's one of, if not THE most used real estate websites out there... Go figure...

Zillow continually undervalued my house for years. Probably because I bought it below market price, it was an estate sale. About 2 months ago, Zillow finally noticed that it appeared every house on my street went for higher sq ft value so they re-estimated the value, more inline with my neighborhood. Since I’m not planning to sell, it is just interesting to watch.

zillow is a generalized algorithm, meaning that it can't know the condition of your house, and it makes location generalized assumptions about your house. Zillow does not know the condition of the house, nor any desirable features unless added and the algorithm can value the feature. Sometimes it will be approximately correct, other times it will be windy wrong.

As compared to a actual paid valuation, Zillow is most likely significantly wrong if the house isn't similar to the houses in the general area, as the paid valuation looks at the condition of the house, etc. and the specifics. Its about 50K off 10% low on my parents house which I just had a professional valuation done, it was 100K (66%) high on my wife's parents' house as the condition of a 250 yo house was not kept up as well as the current houses. But with houses all very similar in the villages, the current valuation is probably a lot closer to an expected sale price than other locations

So again, its just a location generalized algorithm based upon similar house sales in the local area. . . . only a place to start, and with anchoring biases, meaning it was the first public valuation web site where people got their first free valuation, and as an anchor its a place people belief is accurate as they have no other source to evaluate the quality of the algorithm

in other words, its free and you get what you paid for it. . .

finance guy

Yes, it's one of the most used. It's also one of the least reliable with regards to actual value of the homes, and whether or not the home is even available for sale. I saw a home on there last week that said it was available for sale, and it was sold a month ago and had been pending for two months before that. Again, it was an MLS listing from a nationally-known real estate company, so it's not like it was some obscure listing that might take a few months to update.

Go figure, that people might find something useful even in something unreliable.

Sold house in a week using Zillow.,,couldn’t have been happier…

Just sold our house in Virginia. The most accurate "estimate" was Redfin.com which was off by only $10k.