Can Zillow Be Trusted?

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed)
Feb 14th 2007 at 3:03PM

Free online real estate estimates, such as the Zestimates provided by Zillow.com, are a boon to many home buyers. They provide fast, hassle-free estimates of homes all over, with the intention of giving shoppers an idea of what's available before they even head out to look in person. According to the Wall Street Journal, however, Zillow isn't quite as reliable as it seems to be, given the fact that it gives prices down to the dollar, not just round-number estimates. For instance, it listed a 7,600-sq. ft. home in Fall City, WA at $661,756, but the home sold in January for over $2.5 million. The Northbrook, Il. house pictured was pegged at $450,000, but sold for nearly double. And the errors can go the other way, as well, with an El Cerrito, CA house selling for $80,000, though its estimate was over $500,000.

Zillow tries to keep things as accurate as possible, of course, but the bottom line is that it is best to take their estimates with more than a grain of salt just in case the 5% error you are expecting turns out to be 50%.

Tags: estimates, homes, houses, real estate, wall street journal, wsj, zillow

Filed under: Estates

Source

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Goodyear? Great Year! Feb 15th 2007 9:18AM

So let me get this straight. I should "take with a grain of salt" info I get for free on teh internets?

Thanks a million, honey. I was about to put a $429,000 offer on a house, but Zillow was wrong. It's only worth $379,000!

File this under "No sh!t, Sherlock!"

Seriously, Zillow sucks.

Brian Porter Feb 15th 2007 9:18AM

dude - all they normally show are the estimates for the taxes...

Todd Feb 15th 2007 6:10PM

Another day, another hatchet-job by the National Association of Realtors - yawn

Zillow has the tools for you to fine tune your homes value called "Make me move" - if you feel your home is listed inaccurately its up to YOU to make the correction, m-kay?

..and to you greedy, slimeball real estate agents who's new found life mission is to bad mouth Zillow I bring to your attention the Shakespeare line:

"Me thinks thou doth protest too much!"

( Although quoting Shakespeare may be over the heads of the average real estate agent )

David G from Zillow.com Feb 19th 2007 3:45PM

Hi, it's David from Zillow.com

Brian -

We only show tax values in areas where we don't have sufficient data to calculate Zestimates. The most common occurrence of this is in non-disclosure states where sales transactions are not public records.

Most homes on Zillow have Zestimates.