[quote=HenryPP]The other homes in the neighborhood are very similar. Same square footage for the houses, with minor variation in land area. All were built at the same time, all look very similar. Basically a neighborhood of cookie-cutter mid-sized family homes.
As for prices cooling, why would only my house be cooling, according to Zillow? Zillow doesn’t have the prices on any of the others dropping. And a 30% drop in a few months is not “cooling” – it’s a crash.
And Trulia shows all the houses, including mine, rising.
Maybe it’s as livinincali says. Maybe Zillow just doesn’t like me. 😀
I’m treating it all as a bit of a joke. Except I have this nagging feeling that someone is manipulating the price for this particular home, and I don’t know why.[/quote]
HenryPP,
I wouldn’t worry about it. You might just want to click on the “Edit” button and there is a section called “Report Problem with Listing”. My house was actually listed twice on Zillow. And the values were $200,000 difference on the SAME house. I reported it and Zillow didn’t do anything for over 18 months but finally they did delete the 2nd one that I reported as there were two listings.
So, you might want to report it and see if it does any good. I agree with the others that it really is a moot point what Zillow gives as a Zestimate. It’s all kind of gimmicky that actually drives traffic to their site from people checking their zestimates all the time.
But if it makes you feel better you can actually put a note in the “Owner Estimate” section. I actually have friends that do that. Some put in notes stating how it’s off or why they believe it’s off.
I wouldn’t worry about some conspiracy theory. It’s just that there can be many factors for mistakes including human error entering it, etc.
I actually met Stan Humphries from Zillow the co-creator of the Zestimate earlier this year at a real estate conference. I chatted with him for about 45 minutes. He’s a really nice guy. It was funny as there were probably over 100 people in the audience in a seminar he was giving and they were all bitching about the Zestimates. Zillow really doesn’t care if they are off or on.
Actually in my area they aren’t far off but I know other areas that are wildly off. I don’t think it matters either way more than owner ego. I’d focus on comps of other similar properties in the area.
