How accurate is Zillow for house values?
I looked up my house on Zillow today and it gave me a value that, frankly, is about $15K higher than I would have thought. Not that I am complaining, but it’s hard to believe.
Are Zillow estimates usually accurate? Are there other (similar) websites that do the same sort of calculations?
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It may depend on how fast the market moves in your area. Where I live it’s dead on.
According to Zillow:
(In response to this criticism and probably a bit biased.)
Today, we produce Zestimates on 100 million U.S. homes. Our median error rate, nationwide, is currently 6.9 percent, which means half of all estimated values are within 6.9 percent of the final sale price. By comparison, when we launched in 2006, we offered a Zestimate on 50 million U.S. homes and had a median error rate of 13.6 percent. In eight years, we have doubled our footprint and cut our error rate in half. And we continue to improve.
^^^ That sounds fairly accurate. The trick is zillow doesn’t see things like power lines in the back yard, a house that is in disrepair, a house that has out of date finishings, etc. also, if you live in a suburban or urban cookie cutter type area it will be more accurate. The more rural, or the more varied the homes are within a mile of you, the more difficult it is for a computer system to hit the number correctly.
I figure it is fairly accurate but sometimes they have some annoying gimmicks which can give a possibly inaccurate house value. I bumped into one when moving out of California where a neighbor’s house which was almost identical to my house was given a value $60,000 greater than mine. Their house was a tad bit smaller than mine with a yard that was slightly larger. According to all the realtors we went through, it was probably due to the house’s previous selling price so while we bought my house at 290,000 back in 2002, the neighbors bought their house for about 345,000 in 2006 or 2007. So now my former house is priced at around 280,000 while the neighbor’s are around 340,000. Very annoying.
My house is listed there. Not sure why. But it too is listed at about 10K higher than it should be.
@Dutchess_III I think any house can be listed there. Zillow’s primary purpose is (I guess) to show your property value and not that it is on/off the market.
@Winter_Pariah What you bought the house for doesn’t matter. All that matters is what the market will pay, which usually depends on supply and demand and the values of the houses around you.
That wouldn’t really explain why the neighbor’s house is priced $60,000 more than my old house, would it?
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