the kids offered the asking price, there was one other family 'bidding,' house was on the market only 10 days or so when they saw it, and with luck, they'll start moving in Thursday. SO I guess 'we're' satisfied with Zillow.

You took my line.

I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

My home is far overvalued on Zillow. I think they assume we have remodeled and updated, but apart from necessary repairs, we haven’t.

There is a link on your home’s page to allow you as the homeowner to edit information that may not be correct and add details, such as what you love about your property. Doing so might solve your problem, but I’m not sure.

They certainly have your attention.

One should never underestimate how far online companies go to manipulate people psychologically.

that sometimes doesn't work quite right.

I bought my current place ten years ago. For nine years the Zillow value showed right at or a little below what I'd paid, which seemed correct. A few months ago my home us supposedly worth about 50% more than it had been. I know prices have improved in my city, but I'm a bit skeptical I could get that much, even considering recent home improvements.

Also, the Zillow listing for my home has the square footage correct, but says I have 3 bedrooms when I only have 2. Possibly that incorrect number of bedrooms is responsible for some of the excess value. So see if Zillow has suddenly changed something such as square footage or number of bedrooms.

We sold a home in Connecticut for $380,000 or so back in 2017. A few months after closing, the zillow value was right around $380,000, which is what you would expect - a buyer bought the home for that much money and it appraised at a high enough value for them to get a mortgage on it based on the $380,000 price.

However, by the time fall came around, Zillow revalued my sold home to like $297,000. WTF?

I had already sold the home, so didn't really care... but, I contacted zillow anyhow and got some automated responses, but I think by early 2018, they moved the value back up to around $330,000.

(Just checked, and it's back down to $300,000 Z Estimate)

salt. Condition, location and price per sq. ft. is more important in gauging initial interest. But I really can't answer your question about why your neighbor's homes didn't change. I'm pretty sure they have a place on the website to inquire about stuff like that. Usually when a price drops or increases it would have more to do with "comps." That doesn't seem to be the case here.

I would look for other website listings. Try Redfin. And if you google ‘websites like Zillow’ you can find quite a few.

they have models that are arguably better than nothing, but suffer from some serious problems.

first, they have incomplete information, so no matter how clever their model is, it can be whipsawed by new information simply because they as they make their information more complete. they suddenly get new or updated information for an entire nearby neighborhood and boom, prices in your neighborhood go up or down by a huge amount.

second, they usually don't know about improvements or state of repair of your house. there can be a huge difference if you neglected your house vs. if you kept up with repairs and added a new room or other features.

third, they usually don't have a good idea of what a "comparable" house is. they rely on things like average sales price of a home in your area. well, in my "area" there are some multi-million dollar homes, which is most definitely not a "comparable" for my house. but if one of them is sold recently, the value of my house jumps even if the owner of the multi-million dollar home took a loss, just because the "average" recent sale jumped.

so, remember when i said the models have problems even if they're clever? guess what, they're not clever, either.


best way to gauge the value of your home is to tell a realtor you're thinking of selling and ask them what ballpark you could list it at. if you really need to know, spring for an appraisal.

last time i refinanced, i was able to get an appraisal for about 35% higher than what zillow was showing.

as far as i can tell, they have no clues about the conditions of these properties.

i bought a little single family out of a bankruptcy. it was a mess. we did a gut rehab.
because i have had it listed as a rental for a year, as well as looking at it before i bought it, i have seen their estimates go up and down.
i dont think it ever even showed the very low price i paid for it, nor have they gone as high as the appraisal i got when i finished it.

they certainly have no idea of any of the work that we did on it, unless they are taking that from my rental listing. the sales listing was also in their system, and they never reflected that.

so, yeah, it means pretty much nothing.

also, their ratings on my rental were wildly off. since there are almost no sf houses for rent in my hood, or the city generally, they kept comparing it to apartments.

by houses near you. Close to your square ft., lot size and age. What it sold for or asking price. Then a realtor comes in and depending on the interior, what you can sell for. It could be that a home similar to yours sold real cheap or was foreclosed on. Zillow estimate means zilch. As far as I know an appraiser doesn't use Zillow to decide the value.

I read this morning - NYT or WP? - that tech companies are getting into the real estate business, with the goal of instant buying and digital signing. No more law office closings and signing tons of papers. Zillow is one of those companies. This is a new business model, and you can be certain that the realtors lobby will fight it tooth and nail - or figure out how to play the game as well, since some realty companies are humongous enough to have the resources to do the same thing. This model may not work in all regions and all types of property, but now that Zillow's interest is no longer in providing (presumably) impartial data, it is now in their interest to depress values so that they can benefit from those lower prices in certain markets in order to profit on the flipping.

This is new, but I think it's fair to say that consumers will be screwed.

They don't announce the formula but the general logic and criticisms are fairly well known

They baseline off the lot size, baths, square footage, number of bedrooms, tax assessment, date built, and a few other features. They also take into account when and how much the house last sold for.

They then modify based on the sales history of your area. An area with low sales activity can be skewed badly by an outlier. The smaller the sample set, the greater the impact. A short sale or just a run down house with a similar profile can skew the data as Zillow will not understand the extenuating circumstances and assume your house will follow the same pattern. Zillow will assume that the other house's low sale price reflects low market value for that type of home overall.

Also, since they are dependent on public records, if their source gave them a bad value for anything in your home's history, then they can be off by a ridiculous degree