Most real estate investors are obsessed with finding the next great deal. So much so that they stay up into the wee hours of the night scouring the internet for properties, sometimes in far away cities, so they can generate excel charts full of data and analysis. As real estate investors know, our livelihoods depend on the accuracy of the data we analyze and for that reason I’m begging you to PLEASE stop searching for real estate on nationwide portals like Trulia and Zillow! For the past 12 months brokerage after brokerage has decided to withdrawal their listings from the nationwide real estate search portals citing, among other things, horribly inaccurate information. Here are some reasons why the real estate investor, in particular, should stay away from these websites.
Slllloooooooowwwwwww Real Estate Search Results
National portals like Trulia and Zilliow are slow to show new listings. When a property is listed for sale it hits the local MLS in a matter of minutes, usually about 15, but can take as long as 9 days to populate to nationally syndicated sites according to studies on the subject. To real estate investors ready to pounce 9 days might as well be 3 months. By the time the investor sees the listing, sees the property and submits an offer sufficient time will have passed that there could be one or more competitive bids or quite possibly the property could have sold already. A seasoned real estate investor knows how important timing is and getting all of your real estate listings even 24 hours later than your competitors will cause you to miss out on great deals.
Bad Data
The real estate company Redfin was hired recently to assess the accuracy of sites like Trulia and Zillow and their study found that approximately 36% of the listings shown as active on Zillow and Trulia were no longer for sale in the local MLS, compared with almost 0% on local brokerage websites. The study further found that brokerage sourced listings using their local MLS feed displayed 100% of the MLS homes listed for sale on their websites but Trulia only displayed 81% and Zillow 79%. So let me summarize – over 1/3rd of the listings you are seeing are NOT ACTUALLY FOR SALE and you only get to see 4/5th of the listings that are actually for sale. LOL. I could go on but really there’s no need. Obviously anyone searching for properties in a city would like to have access to all of the listings that are for sale and none of the ones that aren’t.
Misleading Advertising
Another common complaint from users of websites like Trulia and Zillow is the misleading nature of their advertising of listings. Real estate agents are allowed to purchase advertisements that appear prominently next to listings that ARE NOT theirs to mislead the buyer into contacting the advertising agent while the buyer mistakenly believes they are contacting the listing agent. Some buyers would prefer to purchase directly from the listing agent because they feel he or she is more knowledgeable about the property and because the buyer may believe it is possible to negotiate a larger discount when dealing directly with the listing agent who may be willing to cut commission to make a deal happen.
What’s My House Worth? (Don’t Ask Zillow)
I considered writing an entire post of the accuracy…or inaccuracy, of real estate portal pricing tools like the famed Zillow Zestimate. For those who aren’t familiar with Zillow the website offers an opinion of a listed house value called a Zestimate and it is prominently displayed on each property’s listing page. Sounds great right? Unfortunately the Zestimate values aren’t even close to the actual values that the properties sell for. If you’re wondering how I can be so sure it’s because, to Zillow’s credit, they actually publicize the accuracy of their Zestimates city by city. To measure the accuracy of the Zestimate Zillow compares the actual home sale prices of homes with their Zestimate and they’ve found that the Zesimtate is within 5% of the actual sale price around 33% of the time and within 10% of the sale price around 50% of the time. The actual data for each city can be found here.
What To Do?
For real estate investors in need of accurate and timely data national search portals like Trulia and Zillow are not as reliable as other options available. Instead of searching for properties on these websites real estate investors should focus on smaller, local brokerage based websites, establish relationships with local real estate agents or get a real estate license and pay to join the local MLS where they invest. These steps will assure that you are getting the most accurate and up to date information and will give you a competitive advantage over those who are searching for real estate with websites like Trulia and Zillow.
What do you think? Do you use Trulia or Zillow in your business?
Data Source: http://www.inman.com/news/2012/10/3/redfin-study-knocks-zillow-trulia-listings-accuracy
Photo: JR F
{ 86 comments… read them below or add one }
I couldn’t agree more I learned fast that these sites were often outdated and had incorrect information.
It’s a shame…they could be really great.
I couldn’t disagree more. I agree that the info can seem old when housing prices are dropping fast – it seems like Zillow is about 3 months behind.
But a lot of these Zillow is bad posts come from disgrundled real estate brokers who no longer can present outrageous estimates to homeowners trying to get their business.
Sure your home is worth 400K – well Zillow says 300K – it could be off by a bit, but what would make my home worth 100K more – usually folks that do things to their home, heavily advertize the fact. This was a short sale, we put on a new roof, flooring, kitchen, windows, got rid of the hideous smell so we think it really is worth 400K instead of 300K that is posted.
Well that is fair, and something to consider, but it is certainly not something to blame zillow about.
You ask what can make the home “worth $100k more.” In many cases, it’s because Zillow is reflecting values well below the true market value.
A recent listing of mine in Mesa? Zestimate is $121k. FHA appraisal came in at $150k.
Another listing in Peoria. Zestimate us $168k. Actual sales price is $187,500.
Another recent sale in Peoria. Zestimate is $138k. Appraised value? $172,000.
On the two listings, it wasn’t an issue of the home being worth more than market value and viable comps suggest as evidenced by the appraisals. It’s a question of the Zestimate being 20 percent inaccurate.
I get the impartiality argument. Magic 8 balls also are impartial and about as accurate.
Great article.
I agree very much with the point of the other agent ads that mislead buyers to click and use the ad agents and not the original agent. Most users don’t understand the ad space in zillow and google especially with their subtle ways of showing its an ad.
Many have echoed those sentiments. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I use Zillow to see what other houses in the area have sold for. In my city, the Zillow estimate is usually pretty close.
Where do you live? I’d like to share the data on that city with everyone.
Fayetteville, NC. I would like to see if the data is close. Thank you.
Zillow misleads the many newbie and inexperienced investors by showing over-value or under-value. They have wild % fluctuations on valuations for whatever their internal robotic software code is programmed to do. Unfortunately, true property valuations cannot be robotically calculated by software. Real Estate is a business of geography, demographics, neighborhood, quality of construction, repair requirements, taxation, etc., etc. You can’t code this! Software geeks who think this can be done should choose another venue.
We have one property that we are rehabbing at this time that has an appraisal of $300k+ after we are done. Zillow shows less than 1/2 of that valuation. We laugh, chuckle and feel sorry for the inexperienced people who take Zillow at its’ word. Far from it, Zillow should remove their valuations as they serve absolutely zero purpose because they’re not even close a large percentage of the time.
If robots and websites could replace real estate agents they would have do so already. There’s a personal experience component that, you note, cannot be duplicated by algorithmic alone. I agree the Zestimate should be removed as it does a great disservice to the real estate industry and really is a blight on an otherwise good website.
Thanks for your kind reply. Mr. Thompson, please use your influence to remove the ZEstimate. It is neither an estimate, guesstimate, valuation or anything else for that matter. It is a waste of time that causes more confusion than is necessary. Real Estate professionals who live in the area in question and are familiar with the properties and neighborhoods are the people who are most useful in determining valuations. How can a ZEstimate on one of our properties change by 12% month over month to the upside when the number was way off base to start with? Let’s leave the valuations to the professionals and leave the software code to more useful endeavors?
Your input is duly noted Alex. If you want to shoot me the address of the property you’re rehabbing, I’d love to have someone look into the Zestimate. jayt@zillow.com
Do you believe the Zestimates to be an issue that can be resolved one property at a time?
Probably not “resolved” one property at a time Jonathan, but the Chief Economist at Zillow once told me, ‘We learn something from every data point, good or bad’ (I paraphrase, but that was the gist of it) so I’m sending over data until they tell me to stop.
Gotcha … here are another 68 “data points”, at least from the inaccurate listing side. I gave up after six pages of results.
http://allphoenixrealestate.com/glendale-real-estate-a-christmas-gift-for-zillow/
Correction, robots and websites *have* replaced traditional real estate agents… I’ve never used one, and I’ve always gotten a great deal. Plus doing the paperwork with the county is easier than doing my taxes. Thats why your “program” to get your “license” to the MLS only took a few weeks to get.
You’re making a horse and buggy argument during the age of the automobile. Or in other-words, you’re career is on the down curve.
Hello, Jay T from Zillow here!
If I may, I’d like to make a few comments…
Frank, you said, “The real estate company Redfin was hired recently to assess the accuracy of sites like Trulia and Zillow and their study found that approximately 36% of the listings shown as active on Zillow and Trulia were no longer for sale in the local MLS, compared with almost 0% on local brokerage websites.”
Actually, it was Redfin that commissioned the WAV Group to make the study. Just a couple of things to keep in mind: 1) the study was a sampling of selected zip codes in select markets. While thorough, it was still a small sample. The study fails to mention that there are also many homes for sale that aren’t shown on the MLS, but are shown on Zillow (FSBOs, “Make Me Moves,” new build homes, and pre-market foreclosures often do not appear in the MLS).
As for “misleading advertising”, Zillow prominently displays the listing agent, at both the top and bottom of the page, their contact info, access to their profile, and the listing brokerage’s name and number. All for free to the agent (they do NOT need to be a Zillow Premier Agent for this. They just need a free Zillow profile).
Home value estimates are, as you pointed out, displayed on all properties, and also as you point out, we are completely transparent about the accuracy of these estimates. Accuracy varies depending on many factors, including how much public data is available in any given area. The Zestimate is a good starting place for determining home valuation, but was never intended to replace a professional evaluation.
The advice to use a local agent/brokerage site is solid. But, as a former real estate brokerage owner (and as a current Zillow employee) I think the savvy investor would use ALL available sources to look for and research property. You may just find that investment gem has never seen the light of a MLS or agent/broker site. Zillow offers many potential listings and a lot of other info that isn’t typically available on broker, agent, franchise, or public MLS sites.
If it isn’t the Phoenix Real Estate guy in person! Congrats on the new job with Zillow and thank you for your post, it is greatly appreciated!
Something tells me you’re familiar with this study and I checked and you are absolutely correct that it was a Redfin commissioned study and not a study performed by Redfin. I will try to have the post updated so thank you for the clarification. According to the study the WAV “analyzed a sample of 6,401 home listings in 33 zip codes from 11 metro areas.” Do you feel that the study was unscientific, unreliable or yielded results that don’t accurately reflect Zillow’s listing accuracy or listing speed?
As you know Zillow and others have been long criticized for misleading advertising. What happens to the listings whose agents have not registered for the free Zillow account? At one time that space was rented to agents willing to purchase the space. In those instances the consumers could be and often were tricked into thinking that person was the listing agent. Is that not the case anymore with Zillow?
I considered writing an entire section on Trulia/RealtyTrac and Zillow’s Foreclosure Center. The “pre-foreclosure” listings that are not actually for sale are often/always included with homes that are actually for sale on the MLS. Obviously this can be confusing for consumers who don’t understand the foreclosure process and to me this undermines the argument that Zillow has listings that are not available on the MLS. I’m not familiar with this particular part of Zillow but FSBO and new construction homes not listed on the MLS would be valuable if the listing data is accurate.
Unfortunately I have to respectfully disagree with you with respect to the Zestimate. I think the Zestimate does a great disservice to the entire real estate industry and it should be removed from Zillow entirely. As we both noted the accuracy does vary by city but not being within 5% of the sale price about 33% of the time and not being within 10% of the sale price about 50% for most cities is not very good. All of the data I’ve seen shows the average list price to sale price ratio ranging from 97% – 90% in various localities. If 66% of the time the price estimate will not be within 5% of the eventual sale price and 50% of the time it will not be within 10% of the eventual sale price don’t we have to ask what value this pricing tool has for the consumer? Maybe you can persuade me and explain what the value of the Zestimate is? How is it a good place for starting to determine home value if it can only get to within 20% of the eventual sale price with any regularity?
You are 100% correct that investors and consumers should use all resources available to them and my objective in writing this post was just to open their eyes to of some of the limitations and shortcomings that sites like Zillow currently have. Either way I have a immense respect for you and everything you’ve accomplished for the real estate industry and I genuinely appreciate your thoughtful comments.
Thanks Frank!
“Do you feel that the study was unscientific, unreliable or yielded results that don’t accurately reflect Zillow’s listing accuracy or listing speed?”
I think the study was pretty well done. I haven’t cracked a stats book since college, so I can’t speak to the statistical significant of it. Obviously it’s a sample, and it may well be “statistically significant”. But we all know how local real estate is, not just within a Zip Code but sometimes even across the street.
“What happens to the listings whose agents have not registered for the free Zillow account? At one time that space was rented to agents willing to purchase the space. In those instances the consumers could be and often were tricked into thinking that person was the listing agent. Is that not the case anymore with Zillow?”
Some agents without profiles will be in brokerages with agreements as to how their listings are identified. Some won’t. In those cases, yes, paying Premier Agents are shown by the listings. They are tagged “Premier Agent” and listing agents are tagged “Listing Agent”. There’s certainly no trickery intended. Maybe we should take a look at better agent identification. We’re always looking at improving the “user experience,” I’ll add it to the list!
We’ll probably just have to agreed to disagree on the Zestimate, it could be debated for days. It’s clearly not immune to debate. There’s no way an algorithm will ever replace a trained professional’s eye or experience. I see real value in the trend data as even if the precise value of the home is questionable, pricing trends over time, which the Zestimate can provide, is of interest at times.
Thanks for the kind words!
It’s not “accuracy” when it’s wrong as often as not.
As we have discussed elsewhere, in metro Phoenix, Zillow is accurate roughly 25 percent if the time.
By definition, a “ore market” foreclosure is not a home for sale. It’s pre-market and may not reach the market for a number if reasons. Similarly, Make Me Move listings can’t really be considered inventory as the asking prices have no basis in reality.
Between the delayed (if ever arriving) data, the false listings, and the inaccurate valuations, an investor or regular buyer using such information will waste considerable time sifting through the problematic data to get to the real stuff.
Note, Jay … It’s not just agents who are saying the Zestimates are a disservice. If Zillow wants to be a big boy real estate portal, it ought to act like one.
Uh oh two Phoenix heavyweights! Maybe we can work with Jay to help Zillow become the resource we’d like it to be and in turn they would pull away from their competition.
Truth be told, Frank, I have no more interest in helping Zillow than I would help a squatter who took up residence in my living room put their bed together. An interloper is an interloper.
If a company decides to enter the real estate space, the hope would be that it would add value. Zillow doesn’t do this, unfortunately. Yes, it has a slick mobile interface and a tremendous pr machine that essentially protects it from any serious look at its data. But that mobile interface leads to widely inaccurate, untimely, incomplete listings data and somewhat fantastic (in the other sense of the word) Zestimates.
“We are here, now help us get our data right so our stock options all go through the riof” isn’t a pitch that would cause me to help. All Zillow has done us make out job as agents that much harder as we have to explain away the numerous errors.
And thank you for your patience with my iPhone caused spelling deficiencies.
I have used Zillow a great deal for quick research to get a ballpark idea on a property. I don’t shop on Zillow for MLS properties rather the ones missing from the MLS. I just yesterday used Zillow to provide some baseline data for a property estimation bid. I was able to show that the 20 similiar properties sold in 2012 sold for 91% of the Zestimate compared to 93% the year higher.
Zillow of course cannot account for damages or repairs because it lacks that data but it is a great tool if used correctly, in my experience.
Thank Kyle! It sounds like those are some really good uses for Zillow!
Actual sales figures and ZEstimate are two vastly different things. Actual sales have value. ZEstimate does not have any value to an investor or a homeowner. I’m not a real estate agent, but am an investor and if I need comps, I look them up. A homeowner should most importantly speak to a realtor to get help in valuation or look up recent sales, but at the same time must bear in mind that they are truly looking at apples to apples. A 1,500 sq.ft. home that sold for $50k and another one that sold for $150k in the same neighborhood in the same time period are not comps. Those that didn’t understand my last sentence really should speak to an agent.
Zillow isn’t something that I use. Irrespective of the report about the age of its data, I find that the site has too much data from seemingly disparate sources and that makes it cumbersome and hard to navigate for this investor. I have always been an early adopter of good technology and it’s suffice to say that I rely a good bit on data that I cull from internet sources, but at the end of the day, I rely mostly on my experience and instincts to get results – if it’s too hard too figure out, it most likely isn’t a good deal any way. Basically, I am so experienced that I don’t need copious amounts of data to arrive at proper valuations or to figure out the wholesale/retail margins within the context of those valuations. I imagine that Zillow and other consumer-level sites are good for REI novices and others without experience to use as a means of developing baseline intelligence and learning about available inventories,as well as an advertising and lead generation tool for brokers. To each his own though. I don’t know everything…just how to work within my own system.
I agree that data is pretty bad on those sites mentioned. early in my rei data gathering n analyses, I quickly learned garbage in, garbage out, and that meant excluding data from those sites for finding properties. that said, sites like zillow n trulia cannot be blamed for their opinion (estimates) no more than google can be blamed for finding restaurants and other businesses in the real world. there is a vast array of data sources that we can go to. I don’t agree that zillow tries to fool ppl about their site n data, etc. as a business they need to focus on the user experience and they have plenty opportunity for disclosures about their listings n how they crunch data. it’s just very easy for us to gloss over the disclosure text in search of the key words n numbers of the next hot deal.
as u had mentioned and I think other investor users of the site will too… zillow, trulia, n the like will lose credibility if they don’t clean up their data n analyses to reflect what the market is really doing. the great thing about capitalism n business is that if u don’t get w the program soon… someone will pick up the slack n get it right real quick. maybe just not (yet) quick enuf for some ppls preferences tho
but ya… in today’s rei, bad data from certain regions from portal sites is just part of the newbie investors’ learning curve. and again, Darwinism (capitalism?) in business will weed out those that don’t get w the program..
happy holidays!
My wife and I have used Zillow extensively over the last 6 months to find a home to buy. (We just closed today!) and I have also tried many local brokerage sites. At least in my market (and every other one that I have ever seen) local brokerage sites suck major bom-bad. Basic search tools are missing (Many lack the ability to search based on a lot size, for example- this was very important to us. They all lacked something essential). Zillow presents data on properties in a far superior format to any local brokerage sites (and by far better than the MLS systems I have seen). Zillow also has saved searches, bookmarked homes, and other features that make it superior for home buyers. If I had access directly to the local MLS, I may have used it. Certainly, when I begin looking for investment homes, I would love to have direct access to MLS, because your article hit the nail on the head with the whole timeliness of the data thing- I don’t know how many times I’ve contacted my agent about a home to find out it was already under contract or sold. In some cases, properties have remained on Zillow for months after they have already sold.
My wife and I found the home we bought today on Zillow, and we love it. I will continue to use Zillow for the foreseeable future. At least until the quality of other alternatives increases drastically.
Another note regarding Zestimates- I have never expected a Zestimate to be within 5% of the sales value on a single property. I generally only look at the Zestimates across a neighborhood or area of town to see what the general values are in that given area. This way I can tell if a house is priced significantly below the Zestimates of other houses in the neighborhood. I could care less what the Zestimate is on a given home I may be interested in. I think Zillow makes it very clear on their site what a zestimate is and what it is based on. I also think they make it fairly clear who the listing agent is, at least after you have looked at a few listings. (Perhaps they could do better in this area).
Over all, Thank You Zillow folks for creating an Awesome website! All you brokers and agents out there with your own sites- if you don’t like Zillow, get to crackin- it ain’t that difficult to build a decent site!
Well James, congrats on the new home, and thanks for using Zillow, it’s appreciated! The “user experience” you describe is important to us. As is accurate and timely data, which we are always working on improving.
Took me 2 minutes to verify what I thought to be true from reading the comment. James is a spammer and not a real person. Clicking the link in his avatar confirmed it for me, but if you want more proof https://twitter.com/ensignavenger
I assure you, I am very much a real person. It does appear that a very old twitter account I had setup has been taken over by a spambot. Thanks for pointing this out, I will see if I cannot remedy the situation. I experimented with Twitter in the past and found it to be mostly useless.
SPAMMER! … how could you? writing a paragraph of gibberish… i KNEW IT!
happy holidays, “James”-bot
Happy Holidays to you, too
LOL. Even Spam Bots like the holidays!
James, the link in your Gravatar was broken too. Maybe I’m the only one who vets blog commenters before engaging. Perhaps I spammed myself here? We may never know. Carry on
Happy Zolidays! -Greg’s autoresponderbot
James,
Thank you for using Zillow, and congratulations to you and your wife on your new home.
- Spencer (Zillow CEO)
Spencer – thank you so much for commenting!
I’m sure everyone would love to hear your take on some of the other issues being discussed like the value of the Zestimate for consumers, inaccurate data for both properties listed on MLS and properties not listed, and confusing agent paid advertising practices?
you can do a search on their site and they’ll explain their data procedures and accuracy issues to some extent. here’s an example:
http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm
I don’t think they try to hide anything. however, as mentioned earlier, if their service/data becomes too inaccurate or problematic for the majority of users, it’s only a matter of time before someone else will get it right and take over. altho, when you’re dealing w/data across the nation in sooooo many different markets, you’re bound to have pockets of inaccuracies by varying measures.
James is not a real person. He is a blog spammer.
As I said above, I am indeed very much a real person. Thank you for pointing out that my old Tiwtter account had been compromised- I logged in and cleaned it up, and strengthened my password. Apologies for any confusion the Twitter account may have caused.
I agree with the author that Trulia and Zillow often provide inaccurate data, however they also provide a great arena to locate homes where other avenues that are pay only sites that DO offer accurate data like RealtyTrac dont. What alot of my investors do is find a property their interested in and then either contact me or look it up themselves on RealtyTrac to get the real information. Long story short… Zillow and Trulia by themselves are not very helpful but when combined with other avenues they can prove to be a great resource in an investors arsenal.
Jason Thoele
Agreed! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a client ask us to show a particular house they found on Zillow, and I have to explain to them, it’s sold, or in preforclosure and not for sale. I will admit Zillow and Trulia have both improved in accuracy over the past few years. Although, your local real estate agents will always have the most up to date info connecting right to their MLS systems.
People, don’t buy into a Realtor bashing their competition-Zillow. Sorry Frank, but you use several fallacy filled arguments–including the Straw Man –to bash the first major threat to Realtors ever: transparency and open information. While it is true that Zillow is not a good tool to find a property when it first hits the MLS, this is because Real Estate Brokers have monopolistic control over this information, and they give enough to Congress to avoid anti-trust laws. Zillow uses big data to estimate its valuations. I will take this any day over my agent. broker, or Lawrence Yun telling me ‘now is a great time to buy.’. The fact that they are open about their margin of error is a good thing. My real estate agent–who I trust to be a good real estate agent– hates zillow as well. This further validates my belief that it is a good source. Real Estate Agents can cherry pick ‘comps’ to move a valuation in the way they want it to move. Zillow does this same thing but on a massive scale. Anyone who understands stats gets why this is important. Again, get a good agent. But be wary of anyone who thinks less information is better than more. And that is what Frank is telling you–trust Realtors and only Realtors.
Thanks for the post!
Unfortunately those arguments don’t make any sense b/c Zillow’s own data didn’t prove that the zestimate is a terrible indicator of a properties estimated value. They grade themselves and they don’t even come close to estimating the eventual sale price of most properties in most markets with any accuracy. I’m all for open data and making sure the consumer has access to data but I don’t think I’ve found anyone, anywhere- including the representatives from Zillow who commented on this post- who thinks the Zestimate is even in the ballpark of the actual home’s value. That is what your goal is right? Determining the home’s actual market value? What I said in the last paragraph (which you may have missed) was rely more heavily on local websites, get your own license and review your own data from the MLS or find an agent you trust. Did you have a bad experience with a realtor or something?. I’m also a lawyer and an investor so if you just want to trash me you can trash those professions as well.
A couple of points:
1. You need a good broker / agent. Quality can very–I know from personal experience. My current agent is awesome. He adds considerable value to the process. He worked his a** off on a $35k deal for us. He knows tons of info about foreclosures, short sales, auctions, closing deals, fix and flipping, etc. that Zillow can’t provide. I don’t look to him to tell me what/when to buy. Of course, he does research for me, but I don’t hold him accountable to make a good investment financially.
2. One of my sentences in the previous post was misconstructed. I intended to communicate that Zillow uses a ‘comp’ method just as your local agent does, but Zillow uses massive scale. I can’t find any reason that Zillow would try to ‘get the right comps’ to achieve a particular outcome, whereas your agent may have several.
Frank,
I expect you to ‘talk your book.’
You started a post that bashes an entire company. You threw the first rock. You bash Zillow for innacurate data while providing no data of your own. You have Lawrence Yun ‘on your side’ and you want to talk about in accurate data? As a successful player in the business, I would have less respect for you if you didn’t bash the competition. But you are on the wrong side of history. We live in the information age. 20 years ago Realtors had a monopolistic control on much of the data. Those days are
gone. How do you defend all of the buyer agents who told their clients to buy in 2007 / 2008? To be clear, my argument is not one to exclusively use Zillow, or to not use a Realtor. Use them. I extensively read the Economist, the FT, hybrid online local tools run by agent/brokers http://www.cohomefinder.com. I crunched numbers for 6 months before we bought anything. More info is better. Let’s be honest Frank. Who sued Zillow to get them to cease and desist on the Zestimate? Was this to protect buyers? How many agents have offered to give back their commissions they made on purchases that are now upside down or foreclosed. Zillow is one data point. It’s also clearly a threat to ‘the big boys’ of real estate. It’s in your best interest to bash.
nice find on cohomefinder.com thx!
Erik – what is the incentive for a listing agent to advertise a home for sale on a site that is bound and determined to provide potential buyers with an inaccurate picture if the home’s value? You argue monopoly; I argue common sense.
Zillow isn’t “providing comps on a large scale.” It’s attaching numbers only slightly better than random to homes on a large scale. There’s a decided difference.
Spencer – good to see you here to congratulate James. Care to add your two cents about the sheer volume of incorrect listings on your site that, unfortunately, have distracted buyers from what’s really available?
Johnathon,
Exactly what is Zillow’s incentive to provide inaccurate data? Most ‘crimes’ need a motive. Fail to see what’s in it for Zillow to mislead people intentionally. I can’t say the same for Lawrence Yun and NAR. His job was to convince people to buy Real Estate at the height of the bubble. So you can argue against this a couple of ineffective ways: 1) Claim it didn’t happen. That isn’t going to work as there is a record: http://lawrenceyunwatch.blogspot.com/?m=1. 2) argue that ‘no one saw the bubble / crash coming.’ This is not true. Even I saw it in 2005: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2005/01/worrying_about.html. Or it means that Mr. Yun wasn’t smart enough to see it.
Your point (paraphrasing) about how Realtors dislike advertising on Zillow is valid. My Realtor bitches about the same thing. Again, no one likes competition. And no one wants to ‘be forced’ to spend money on a new advertising platform. See ‘Facebook.’. I can respect that complaint.
Where I call B@@@S$&@ is when someone starts talking there own book while claiming they are doing what is best for the consumers. The NAR has thrived on opacity and keeping information from consumers. Conflicts of interest are not transparent.
Erik -
I don’t know what Zillow’s incentive is, but they’re doing it and have been for years. My argument would be they don’t have an incentive to do it, but because of the sheer volume of apologists out there there is no incentive for them to get the data right. No one holds Zillow responsible for the hundreds of thousands of listings of homes not really for sale; the buyer who sees them shifts the burden of proof onto the agent to prove that the home really is sold.
If you scroll up you’ll find something I wrote last week. Six pages of search results for single family detached homes in Glendale AZ, where I live. About a dozen correct listings. Everything else – more than 100 other listings – either were under contract, in a different city, already sold or were land or townhouses and not detached homes.
There’s no argument to be had about the accuracy of Zillow’s data. The site admits up front that its a coin flip where the Zestimate is within 10 to 20 percent of market value and, at least here in Phoenix, the listings are only about 20 percent accurate.
I get the concept of an investor wanting more data, not less. But seriously, what useful data are you getting from Zillow?
As for the other argument – doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about but, yes, Lawrence Yun is a shill for NAR. Not going to disagree with you there. Happy? But that doesn’t mean everyone who belongs to NAR, especially when we must be a member to have MLS access in most places, agrees with Larry.
You keep referring to Zillow as competition. Okayfine. My competition are other agents who sell homes for a living, not an advertising site.
I personally don’t list the majority of my homes on Zillow for two reasons – 1) There is no advantage to marketing a home on a site that insists based on its inaccurate Zestimate that the value is far less than what it really is. 2) There is absolutely zero evidence – zero – that homes sell more quickly or for more money by being on Zillow.
Yes, James found his house on Zillow. I’m sure someone also bought a home because an agent put a photo of it on a candy bar wrapper. It doesn’t mean long shot marketing is the best way to do it.
Erik, seriously? What is ZIllow’s motivation? Because home buyers and sellers, aka the PUBLIC don’t realize how inaccurate these values are. Zillow pimps these values all over the website and all over their advertising to DRAW TRAFFIC. Because the more traffic they have, the more advertising they can sell. Are you seriously that blind?
As an agent, I deal with people asking and talking about Zillow and Trulia all the time. So much so, in fact, that I have to address this problem both in my initial consultation with them as well as with blog posts on my website.
Zillow Dallas Far From Accurate
Trulia Dallas – Not As Accurate As You Think
Jay and Spencer were very quick to thank James for using Zillow, but James said something that was very telling – “I don’t know how many times I’ve contacted my agent about a home to find out it was already under contract or sold. In some cases, properties have remained on Zillow for months after they have already sold.” And Zillow usually blames the agents.. “We have a tool where agents can report inaccurate listings…” When did it become our job to police YOUR site?
Kelvin,
Yes, I love http://www.cohomefinder.com. Obviously I live in Colorado. I have it set to send me emails daily. It’s the closest I can get to live MLS data. It is where I start my search. The properties I usually end up bidding on have multiple offers–including cash–and this site provides me the quick response I need. To validate one of the OP’s points, Zillow doesn’t move as fast. So I use cohomefinder.com, then Zillow. I am a rental investor.
Johnathon,
I am not an expert in how best an agent should market his business. My general point is that the Information Age has changed how everybody buys everything. From George Soros theory of ‘openness’ to Philip Fernandez book ‘disruptive revenue,’ the point is buyers are more in control of every purchase because of more information. Organizations who wish to stop this process–be it the govt of China or Syria, or Boeing or NAR–are fighting a futile battle. Zillow provides and abundance of data. It’s map/historical actual pricing info is highly accurate for the county I am buying in is accurate: it simply pulls the data from the county. Of course there is a time lag. It rent estimates are as accurate as I need them to be. Another way in which Zillow is likely to be accurate is intra-market data. Because each county is different in each state, comparing these is likely to have more error. But if I am looking at SFD 1500 sq ft <1990's construction, within the same city and area code, data inaccuracies are likely to skew the same way.
Zillow is wildly inaccurate for estimating property value. But in the areas where I invest/manage property (Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta Metro, and the SF Bay area) it is surprisingly accurate at rent estimates.
Great post Frank. Although we use a “quick comp” method between using these types of sites to run an algorithm to filter through daily auction lists (to see which ones might potentially have equity and are worth bidding on), these interfaces can be quite misleading to the average consumer.
I always cringe a little when a seller calls and says “Well according to Zillow my home is worth…”
Yikes. Great topic though, thanks for shedding some light!
I, like the author, and so many others have found Zillow and Trulia to be inaccurate in their information the majority of the time. I strongly advise sellers not to rely on the information they obtain from these sites but to review other sources and compare. At times it is difficult to get sellers to adjust their expectations after they have viewed those sites. I guess it is somewhat normal though, we as a people usually want to believe our stuff is worth a lot more than it usually is. Lol Unfortunately for Zillow and Trulia if the information was more accurate they would have more Realtors paying to advertise on their site. i do like the question and answer section they provide for Buyers, Sellers and Renters.
The onus is on real estate brokers and agents to make a decision to not syndicate, validate or endorse these 3 party websites. More importantly, B and As have to sell sellers why appearing on these large search engines is actually counter productive – which is a tough sell in my opinion. In any case, Brokers and agents have to go a step further and create a much larger search presence on the mobile search front if they truly want to limit buyers and sellers dependency on the Zillows of the world, which is a battle for another day. Since the article deals with or speaks to how investors should or should not use Zillow, I think it misses the point. Investors, in my personal experience, use Zillow differently. Smart investors are already deeply connected to REO brokers and agents who give timely MLS data in the form of automatic emails. Investors are not using Zillow for MLS information. But, they might find Zillow’s recent inclusion of 1.5 million “foreclosures” interesting. Investors play the numbers game and target FSBOs who use zillow to advertise their homes and make offers in most cases on properties site unseen to gauge interests and make the phone ring. Zillow is very investor friendly because of the abundance of data it provides which is widely known to be inaccurate based on Zs algorithm but not to be interpretation as not being useful. If Zillow’s Zestimates were intended to be used as a starting point, this is the group of buyers who benefit the most from that information.
That makes sense here.
eh?
I actually found a great investment on zillow before it even hit the MLS. Though it was probably very rare and was purely because the listing agent was lazy and zillow updates homepath listings daily.
The zestimate on my home is substantially inaccurate and when I questioned the zestimate with Zillow they advised “that they have a First Amendment right to publish any valuation they want and that they never change zestimates”. How arrogant is that? What other consumer facing company takes such a hostile approach to potential customers? Zllows Customer Service is also appalling and they don’t publish any phone or email contact details. Anyone making a complaint is required people to make their issue public on the Zillow Advice Forum where they are subjected to snide and snarky comments from a handful of Zillow cheerleaders who seem to believe that zestimates are infallible.
One aspect of my complaint was that Zillow had a geo-mapping error so that my home was described as being in a neighboring city some 6 miles away. Zillow had the city boundary running down the middle of the road so that homes on one side were zestimated 5 or 6 percent lower than market value, but homes on my side of the street (in the wrong city) were undervalued by 15 to 20%. Because I was persistent and continued to question the accuracy of zestimates over the next 9 months Zillow eventually banned me from their website, demonstrating the most amazing double standards with what ‘cheerleaders’ could post compared to critics.
As a consequence of zillow banning me from their website they also deleted all the information on my home causing the already incorrect zestimate to drop a further $15K. Effectively they have ‘confiscated my home’ refusing me access to correct missing information that impacts the zestimate. When Zillow eventually fixed the geo-mapping problem in June the zestimate for my neighbors home increased within a few weeks by 30%, and has continued to increase every week since so that it has now increased by 40% since resolution of the problem. The zestimate for my home however is still lower than the day that Zillow confiscated my home.
When Zillow behaves in such an arrogant and unfair manner it raises serious issues as to whether these AVM sites can be trusted to operate in a fair minded manner. Zillow has certainly demonstrated that it can’t, and in my opinion the time has come for these websites to be subjected to some form of Regulation to protect homeowners interests. Every other aspect of daily life is regulated, whether it be banking, insurance, healthcare, Investments with the SEC or utilities. With home ownership being such an important aspect of millions of people it is time that our legislators caught up with technology and implemented regulation over AVM websites like Zillow. Bottom line is why doesn’t Zillow correct or delete substantially inaccurate zestimates when reasonably requested by the homeowner? It can only lead to a more accurate information so one has to question Zillows motives for refusing to make corrections. Is it all about getting homeowners to continually check if the zestimate has changed and thereby increasing the number of unique users that generate adverting revenues for Zillow?
that sucks… you might want to share that experience on YELP, Google, BBB, and any other review site. hopefully, others who have been mistreated will chime in and help *influence* some change in company policy of how to work with the public.
the internet works for the li’l guy as much as the big co’s… make it work for you and share your experience.
That really sucks about Zillow undervaluing your home.
Did you have an appraisal that indicated it was worth more?
When finding my house which I am closing on this month, I used Zillow a lot because of its ease. But was disappointed at the outdated data with a house being available. That being said the buying price for my house was right on target. Have a great day on purpose!
It seems any Zillow or Trulia etc reply to data is to overwhelm with a mass of information and vague statements.
Would do a lot more for their long term trust ability if they just said honestly, that study showed xx% of listings are inaccurate, we have also found that xx% of our listings are inaccurate.
We have XXX listings on Zillow that aren’t listed anywhere else. Then let investors make up their own minds if it’s worth checking out Zillow to try and scoop that bargain.
Perhaps I just don’t have the right data, but it seems like the whole point of this article and what the data shows, is that the time wasted on Zillow sifting through multitudes of inaccurate listings would not be good use of an investors time when they could go directly to an MLS powered site.
Would a real estate agent search Zillow if they wanted to buy a house? would an investor if they knew what was going on?
I too have found Zillow and Trujillo to be inaccurate, but as a newbie it is the only tool I have. I would love to have access to the MLS, and I plan on getting my license in 2 years. In the meantime, I would like to establish better win-win relationships with RE agents, what do I have to offer them in exchange for them continually finding comps for me?
This was a great article. I am an investor and a real estate agent and I spend valuable time educating buyers and sellers on the inaccuracy of these sites. I always point them to austinhomesearch.com which for us Austinites, feeds from our local MLS. I am sure that most areas have something similar.
Nice website. I do the same thing here in Philly. My website is http://www.CenterCityTeam.com
I noticed on CenterCityTeam.com that you display Zillow Zestimates on some listings? Also, your site and the austinhomesearch.com both present major usability problems compared to Zillow, which while not perfect, presents a much more accessible and usable website. If local companies don’t like Zillow, they need to provide at least as good of an experience on their own sites to compete.
Transparency and open information are beneficial to homeowners / home sellers / rehabbers and are harmful to middlemen / agents because it eliminates the need and expenses of having a middleman in transaction.
Many other industries have eliminated the middleman in transaction, and the same thing would happen to real estate sooner than you might think and consumers will greatly benefit from that as well.
Thanks to the internet and new technologies that provide these excellent opportunities to the public and cuts the unnecessary expenses from the deal.
I personally use the Zillow frequently and find it an extremely useful website and see how it is improving its services day by day. If anyone from Zillow is reading this, I want to thank you guys for this great service. Please keep it free for consumers and don’t allow anyone discourage you from doing the great job you are doing.
By the way I am not affiliated with Zillow in anyways neither I have been compensated for writing this comment.
The problem is not the transparency of Zillow information but the inaccuracy of it. Only a week or so ago Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff admitted in a Bloomberg interview that Zillow zestimates are over 25% incorrect for 17% of homes. That level in inaccuracy is totally unacceptable to consumers and even more so when Zillow refuses all reasonable requests from homeowners to correct or delete erroneous zestimates.
Doing a bit more rearch I found that for Johnson County in TN that only 4.1% of home zestimates are accurate within 5% ; only 8.2% are accurate within 10% and only 24.5% are accurate within 20% – that means that 75.5% of homes are more than 20% erroneously valued, and the median error rate for the county is 58.4%. Don’t believe me look at the Zillow website for Johnson County Tennessee.
I’m tremendously concerned with the persistent and constant method of enticing consumers who are striving to work on their own to contact agents who are entirely unrelated to the listing, hence, the buyer pays more money for their purchase. Additionally, the most inexperienced agent or neighborhood-unrelated agent may advertise on the listing’s page and the buyer doesn’t know what they are being attracted to. A first-time buyer truly is not able to quickly decipher between where the agent’s contact is and where the soliciting-agent’s contact is and how or why they are different. Zillow and Trulia’s pursuit of this revenue generator scares me. I’m also wary that Zillow and Trulia are now paying “real estate leaders” to convince other realtors and consumers to use Zillow and Trulia. I love this write-up! So much of it is true!
Brittney’s 2 cents
I hate when my clients get all excited and email me the addresses of properties they want to see, but when I look in my system they’re sold or pending. Rely on me your agent to keep you current with new listings not the internet! With regard to Zestimates and estimates of value, that is dated information, these programs use sales comps from transactions that have closed when there are so many other factors. First, that offer was made on average 30 days before it closed, and prices here in Oakland change faster than that. Plus these programs group certain neighborhoods together when really every street is different and new trendy niche neighborhoods are popping up faster than these sites can keep up.
These programs just average the price with no regard to the condition of the property or the type of sale. In Oakland the spread in price/ value varies greatly depending on the condition and type of sale. Short sales sell for less than regular sales, bank owned “As Is” properties also sell cheaper than fixed up and staged homes. These sites even use foreclosure data to determine values which is ridiculous, of a course someone who paid all cash at the auction on the courthouse steps without seeing the interior or getting clean title pays much less than a regular sale.
Even in on market sales such as banked owned properties or just dated properties, an All Cash Investor will get the property cheaper, then three months later after slapping a new Ikea Kitchen in it and some landscaping, the property is sold to a owner occupant with about a 50% mark up. Properties that fall in both categories can be for sale or recently sold at the same time in the same neighborhood, and since these programs use an average (price per square foot among a few other generic things), they w tend to severely overestimate the value on some and under estimate on the others.
Only a good agent who really knows that area can help you determine a properties true value, there is an amount of added unquantifiable value or under value for every property. I tell my clients all the time that there are several different offering prices for homes, there’s an All Cash price, a Conventional Loan price and a FHA price. There is also an “I like it” price, “I’ll settle for it for the right price” price, and an “I have to have it, can’t image anything being more perfect price.”
As a homeowner, I find both Trulia and Zillow offensive and infuriating. What gives either site the right to damage my home value with their rediculous “Zestimates,” or whatever else they choose to call their nonsensical misinformation? I only wish for a class action lawsuit to shut them down.
My thoughts have more to do with slow results and bad data…I know little about the actual inner workings of home values and the like when it comes to Real Estate. But what I can say is this – these websites, both Trulia and Zillow, are very poorly maintained despite their claims of always-there and dedicated customer service teams. Now, I don’t doubt that the people who actually work for these sites are doing a fine job when dealing with customers one-on-one, but what about behind the scenes? My current job is as a marketing agent for a Realty company in the north. All fine and good, it’s a great job with a lot of perks and it has taught me a plenty. I enjoy working with the local MLS’ and maintaining the exposure of a home, etc, etc. BUT I have to admit that a good, solid chunk of my work week is spent mothering our listings on Trulia and Zillow. These are such messy, information over-loaded websites with only semi-friendly user interfaces (Zillow more so than Trulia) disguised as easy-to-use-on-the-go-tools. Every week I find myself re-uploading missing photos, deleting repeating ones, and fixing home facts so that they are actually correct in the system. This is a great hassle and time waster when you are maintaining over 60 active properties, especially if you don’t want to look disheveled and unorganized to a public who knows you use these websites. Now, I know it is unrealistic to set something up and just walk away from it without having to worry about it, but to have to kiss each listing on the forehead every morning to make sure they get through the day (lol) is pretty ridiculous. Anyway, from a sellers perspective, and I communicate with our sellers on a regular basis, I can see how these sites seem to be the answer in getting their homes noticed…but, as others have mentioned, buyers are often led on wild good chases when searching for properties unless each and every single one is individually maintained which is just not possible. I personally prefer working with websites like RealBird on a regular basis…just one and it’s done! Also, note to Trulia, NO ONE wants to upload photos one at a time…get with the program hahaha
Hi AJ,
Russ from Zillow here. You certainly should not have to babysit your listings as much as it sounds like you’re doing. Our systems are set up to automate the posting and updating of all listings you send to us through your feeds. It’s in nobody’s best interests(yours, consumers or ours) to have inaccurate data, period.
Obviously, something isn’t working right here and we want to get it fixed for you. Would you please contact me at russh at zillow dot com so we can get this taken care of for you asap.
Thanks for using Zillow!
Russ
Zillow Customer Care
Right, wrong, or indifferent, you gotta hand it to Zillow for at least being proactive and engaging in the discussion. Most larger organizations simply omit taking the time to involve themselves with these kinds of discussions. I just wish I could get that kind of community involvement with AT&T.
Wow! This turned into a hot topic. I just stumbled across it and felt the need to add my two cents.
I see several factors at work here that are creating the controversy.
Ooops. I hit the wrong button and sent my post before it was finished.
Anyway, the two main factors that I feel are at play are…
1) Buyers and sellers want open information that’s readily available and that has not been filtered or intentionally altered by anyone. I think this probably spawned the birth of Zillow, Trulia, and others.
2) Realtors depend on the MLS and the traditional “system” that’s been in place for a long time for their livelihood. Sites like Zillow and Trulia threaten the established system hence the (understandable) enormous vocal opposition.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that these sites wouldn’t be in existence if they weren’t providing something people want. Like it or hate it, it’s alive and thriving.
I use Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, etc extensively as both a consumer and investor. These sites provide tons of valuable data that isn’t otherwise available to the public. That’s enormously valuable to me. I also have close relationships with local Realtors that provide MLS data that I use to cross-check my online data for accuracy.
A house is ALWAYS only worth what someone is willing to pay for it which means that NO ONE “knows” what any house is really worth until someone makes them an offer. Since it can’t be nailed down precisely, agents create “estimates” from MLS data. The sales price becomes public data and is picked up by Zillow and converted into the Zestimate. Tax values are another data point that is created in exactly the same way as agent estimates and Zestimates. I have a column on my spreadsheet to factor that into the equation. After I compile all the raw data, I call my agent to ask for his estimate. By the time I process all of that information, I have a fairly good idea of what someone will be willing to pay for my property.
I don’t think it’s fair to single out Zestimates as faulty if people are using them improperly. Zestimates are no different than Kelley Blue Book values on cars. Everyone understands that an estimate is NOT a guarantee of value.
One last thought….. A couple years ago, a house popped up on my Zillow search that I liked. I made an offer and got the contract. About a week later, my agent called me and with an excited tone said, “You have to go look at this house that was just listed in the MLS”. I asked for the address and guess what….it was the one that I already had under contract for several days. It was a striking moment for me that solidified my opinion about Zillow and Trulia.
I’m very active in real estate investing but I’m not a Realtor so my first stop of the day is always Zillow. I personally hope they will continue to refine their algorithms and get better at what they do. I’m a huge fan!
Your response was the response that I had wanted to write–you nailed it perfectly:
1) people like information, the more the better
2) anything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it at any given time. Neither Zestimates nor appraisals are ‘the truth,’ and even if they were in a particular moment of time, it doesn’t mean they will be in a month, a year, or a decade.
-Erik
“NO ONE “knows” what any house is really worth until someone makes them an offer”
Just to reinforce this point, my house was appraised by two different appraisors- one came in at $53,000, and the other came in at $48,000. The percentage difference in these two professional appraisers is greater than the percentage difference between many of the Zestimates vs Appraisels that have been posted in these comments.
So, if we are going to get our pitchforks out and burn Zillow at the stake, we best do the same for the appraisers, least we be hypocrites. In fact, the Appraiser actually come out and see the property, and would be expected to be far more accurate!
(There was no Zestimate available on my house, so I can’t compare that to appraised value. I paid 49,900 for it, and got the seller to pay 6% towards the closing costs.)
Wow, fascinating perspectives on both sides. I can only think about accuracy in a comparative sense myself. It’s been referenced at several points in this thread that the Zillow Zestimate is currently within 5% of the sale price 31% of the time, within 10% of the sale price 55% of the time, and within 20% of the sale price 78% of the time. That apparently sounds pretty bad to many of the commenters. But bad compared to what? One of our recent research briefs (http://bit.ly/10No89d) analyzed more than 290K closed sales and found that the initial listing price was within 5% of the final sale price 48% of the time, within 10% of the sale price 71% of the time, and within 20% of the sale price 90% of the time.
So initial listing prices are more accurate than the Zestimate to be sure but, to read some of these comments, one would think that the median absolute error for the Zestimate (8.7%) was in a different universe than the error associated with listing prices (5.6%). This simply isn’t the case. And, if one confines the analysis to listings where we can ensure that the home was not underpriced, Zillow’s median error is 9.1% relative to 6.9% error for the initial listing price (or, in numbers that are perhaps more intuitive, the Zestimate is within 5% of the sale price 32% of the time while the initial listing price is within 5% of the sale price 38% of the time).
As the research brief itself concludes:
“These data clearly demonstrate two things. First, as we expected, real estate professionals who know the local market and intimate details of the home can price a home better than an automated valuation model. But the Zestimate does provide a good starting point for a conversation about home values, a starting point that compares fairly well to list price… But, as we’ve always noted, that pricing conversation that may be started with the review of the Zestimate should ultimately be augmented with the input of opinions from local real estate professionals (agents, brokers and appraisers).”
Thanks for the interesting conversation here.
– Stan (Zillow Chief Economist)
Buried in this heated an infomative debate is the giant elephant in the room. Melinda Allen slipped it in her post above:
“but as a newbie it is the only tool I have. I would love to have access to the MLS, and I plan on getting my license in 2 years”
This is a great debate. My support is mixed a little on both sides. I see value in all the tools. I love the search interface and features of the websites, I love the knowledge of an experienced agent. I love just coasting along a google-map-style interface and seeing homes for sale and recently sold pop up, then tapping on them to get data. That data includes the recent tax assessments and sales history…trend data (very useful), relative data tot he zip and neighborhood…nice to have that all in one place. Good information for various reasons and uses.
I value an appraiser to walk through my home and see high end chef’s kitchen, the master suite and perfect 110 year old hardwood floors. No website is going to factor that into a valuation when they, like agents and appraisers, are so heavily reliant on comps.
The valuation accuracy is sort of a moot point and I cant help but to pay attention a little closer when folks are calling for a service like zillow to be shut down simply becasue on part of its list of services is inaccurate, as they state it is. Its an annoyance for agents because their clients use it and, well, its not always accurate (or not even close…whatever). That is, as I said, an annoyance for them. This reminds me of when a home contractor comes in and balks at the work the DIY weekend warrior did to his home.
Timliness and accuracy of listing data, the other big complaint, is easily fixable. Allow live MLS data to be accessable via data feed to anyone for an appropriate price. I want it. I’d pay for it. I assume other investors that dont have an RE license would want it and would pay for it. Zillow and Zillows users would probably want it and someone in that chain would pay for it.
Maybe this is a stupid question – I don’t have an extensive RE background. But lets talk about the MLS data and access to it, since that is really at the heart of all of this, isn’t it?
I must say that Zillow’s zestimate is quite confusing. I was recently looking at some properties in Downtown San Diego California and was amused at the estimated value cited by Zillow. Using local brokerage websites definitely seem to be the best option for people looking for accurate and relevant information. Like one of the posters commented here, real estate is all about knowing the local neighborhood. I ended up finding a great brokerage website http://www.92101urbanliving.com for downtown san diego condos listings. The type of information they provide is incredibly personal, which sites like Zillow can never provide. Stick with local broker’s and realtor’s sites.
Jay
Of course real estate agents hate Zillow and Zestimates, The seller, the listing agent, and the buyers agent all have a vested interest in keeping potential buyers in the dark about the true value of a property.
Hurray for Zillow. At least it gives the potential buyer an idea if the property is overpriced.