Zillow

[Piobaire]

Accurate? Impact on local pricing? Good or bad force?

Discuss.

 

[gort]

Right now according to mint.com my condo is estimated to be worth about 15K more than it appraised for in March when I refinanced. That's all I can offer to this thread.

 

[MrG]

In my experience it is woefully inaccurate, at least from a pricing/value perspective. I remember looking at it when I was shopping, and the values they gave were just about useless.

I just checked again, out of curiosity, and it still shows some funky prices. Their values don't seem to tie to much of anything. That said, they seem to think my house is one of the most valuable in the neighborhood, so who am I to argue?

 

[Piobaire]

Yeah, it seems wildly unpredictable. It has a house that's about 1k sq feet smaller than mine, right down the street from me, listed 100k more than my house. Mine has a bigger lot, better views, substantially bigger floorplan..no sense.

 

[Michigan Planner]

I agree that the values it estimates for houses are wildly all over the place. I do like the site/app for the map though which I use a lot to see photos and details of interesting houses for sale that I notice while I am out on a run or a driving through a neighborhood I am unfamiliar with.

 

[imatlas]

The "Zestimate" is pretty useless. The algorithm makes no sense at all. We bought our condo last June, and the Zestimate of the value of our property has swung between 50% below our purchase price to 20% over, just in the last few months. Meanwhile, we had an appraisal done two weeks ago, that came up with about 2% appreciation.

I found Trulia to be more useful when we were actively searching.