On foreclosures, how close is Zillow on the predicted sale price. In my area it is showing REO's around 70% ARV. I am totally new at this.

There bad, ignore them. I use their previously sold homes on the map to judge comps.

Zillow is very inaccurate most of the time. I just wrote a blog post about it "Which is better Zillow's Zestimates OR Real Estate Agent's CMA?"

Stop and think about this. You are asking a website that allows people to post whatever they want to about the property to be accurate. Computers and algorithms have come a long way however, there are still people who's entire profession is real estate appraisal. There is also the fact any good is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If I am a flipper I may only be willing to pay $100,000 for a property while a BRRRR investor may only be willing to pay $120000 and someone who actually wants to purchase the property for their own private residence may be willing to go as high as $200,000. Zillow's estimate is about as good as the treadmill at the gym that tells you that you burned 250 calories on a 30-minute run. It doesn't take into account your age, sex, height, weight, heartbeat, or other important factors. Like any other system; garbage in garbage out.

No good at all, plus or minus 30%. And of course Zillow doesn't know if they're gutted, or gold plated.

Zillow can be way too low, way too high, or right on point. You can not use it to determine something as important as investing. This is for home owners to get a ball park value of their home before they talk to a Realtor and get a full CMA valuations based on the real condition (Zillow does not know condition or functionality).

WAG is all I can say.. and very frustrating when investors look at Zillow then question values.

"Jay T from Zillow here. Zestimate accuracy varies depending on many factors. Instead of wondering and speculating, why not just use Zillow's own accuracy data, which we publish down to the county level: http://www.zillow.com/zestimate/#acc " This is great so basically Zillow is agreeing that their data is inaccurate....LOL I am glad we are all on the same page about this. The fact of the matter is that a computer can not look at recent sales and calculate for amenities, views, upgrades, needed repairs, most recent sales (until/if it is fed the new data) etc. For those reasons a free CMA from a competent agent will be a more accurate source of home values.

The zestimates have gotten better since they ran a competition for programmers to find a way to improve the algorithms. The competition paid the winning programmer $1,000,000. I believe that was about a year or so ago. While they are better than in the past i agree they do not account for certain factors that can swing the value up or down significantly. Its good for a quick peak but if truly analyzing a deal I would still have an agent run the comps. Happy holdays everyone!

In the area I invest in the numbers are way off. They do not consider basic things such as the houses from 1890 to 1910 are Victorian and very desirable. The houses from 1929 to 1940 are depression era houses and less desirable than Victorians, even though they are 'newer'. The 1950 houses are cookie cutter, small, and have nothing desirable such as hardwood, nice finishing with details. They are almost all run down slum lord managed rentals. The 1970-80 houses are all fake paneling walls and falling apart and no one wants them. Many are owner occupied by grandmas. Add in the destroyed foreclosures as sales comps and its a mess. Zillow seems to take a square foot sales price and figures out the value from there.

I have also found that Realtor's CMA of a house can be pretty inaccurate when they are trying to get a listing. Probably not Zillow bad, though.

How close is Zillows zestimate?How close is Zillows zestimate?

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How close is Zillows zestimate?

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