Have the zestimates gotten any better?
We were surprised how bad they were last year. Let’s see if they’ve improved once a custom house has been sold for a while:
This was the zestimate before the listing was inputted – way off:
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Here’s what it was after the listing was inputted on Zillow. Even though the list price was entered as $2,199,000, the zestimate INCREASED!
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The sale closed for $1,900,000 on September 7th. How about that – five months later, and the zestimate has adjusted accordingly!
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Zillow says they have improved their zestimates. The median error rate is 5.1% in San Diego, which means half of the zestimates are within 5.1% of being right, and the rest are worse than that – you just have to figure out which is which!
Zillow pumps Zestimate like it has some value, but it’s horrible. Redfin just sent around an email touting a study showing how much more accurate their estimate is (and they’re probably working with a lot less current data). Zillows rent estimates are even worse. Completely detached from reality. Yet here (Portland OR), the ex mayor quoted rent Zestimate averages (which are made up numbers. Not real rents) as part of his “Housing Emergency” explanation. Pushing bad info is trendy these days.
Agreed, and Zillow touts that their local zestimate is more than 5.1% wrong half of the time. After ten years of doing it, that’s all you got? They have become the Voice of Real Estate using a faulty product because realtors/NAR have nothing to offer online. Heck, we sold our only attempt, realtor.com.
And the novice users like a mayor don’t know any better. They just grab and run because it suits their current agenda, not because it is accurate data that can make a valid point. Home sellers are prone to do the same thing!
If it mattered Zillow estimates would be better.
Nobody that I know of has dragged them to court on the issue. I don’t understand why realtors and other groups like large sellers / banks or maybe appraisers haven’t filed class actions against Zillow. The example where the mayor use Zillow estimates as fact to define government decisions clearly shows the harm zillow does to appraisers.
Agree – they put out a vague guess on a home’s value just to give the owner something to argue, and have built it into an empire while realtors stand by idly.
There are people taking their cracks at Zillow:
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20170213/business/170219599/
It might be a lawsuit out of the blue that takes them down?