Hi, I'm located in South Louisiana and was flipping through some properties on zillow.com. For those of you with zillow experience, how can I determine if this is a good deal or bad deal by the information provided on zillow.

I was wondering because of the large difference between the asking price, and the "zestimate", what can be determined as far as the quality of the lead. Any suggestions as to which steps I should take next? Below is a screenshot of the property I'm talking about.

Square ft. = 2,216

Built in 1984

Great shape on inside and outside

Minor renovations needed

Zestimate is ridiculous. You need to look at actual sales... which you can do on Zillow. But you should confirm/verify the information with county assessment data (or tax data... somewhere you can see what property sales were recorded). Best of luck!

Welcome to BP @Damon Armstrong !

LOL! I'm not laughing at you, but I just got finished telling somebody that you can use Zillow for sold comps in the area of a property to help you figure out a PRELIMINARY FMV, but never rely on or even quote the zestimate, it's going to be way off.

Look for the little yellow houses on Zillow and hover your mouse over them to see what they sold for? The date of the sale is important because today's value is based on recent sales and Zillow doesn't always have the most recent sales data. Do your preliminary checks to see if the price is a good one and before you pull the trigger to make an offer, ask your agent friend to give you some comps for that address.

If you don't have an agent friend yet, you need to get one. It can't be a one way street if you want them to be your friend (I should say business associate) for very long. When you come across properties that don't fit your investment criteria, you need to pass the leads to the agent for listings. That way, you are helping each other and the relationship is mutually beneficial.