Zillow shows my house lost $5K this week

[powayseller]

I just posted this on another thread, but it’s newsworthy enough for its own thread.

Zillow is showing price declines. Check your house. What did you find? Care to share?

[bigmoneysalsa]

My condo conversion (rented) went down $3026 last week and 2.1% last 30 days. That’s about $8671 according to the Zestimate.

[kiki]

the house i listed on the previous thread was actually up 11,232 from prior week. i still do not understand what drives the price movements week by week there is no additional sale nearby that could change the value.

[sdappraiser]

Perhaps its the advertising revenue they are receiving that is driving the price changes.

You’ll never figure out how their AVM is calculating these changes when no new ‘real’ market data is available. But it appears they have found a way to bring you back and check every week.

At least I get paid for estimating values (just joking rankandfile, please don’t vomit).

Curious, has anyone clicked an advert?

[ocrenter]

huh? there’s advertisement on zillow? haha

[what_a_disasta]

I have no idea how they value the houses on zillow, but our house which just sold for 640 is on there for 706. We listed it for months at 695-710 and nobody was interested. I don’t know if that is symptomatic of the rest of the valuations on zillow or not, but it wouldnt surprise me.

[carlislematthew]

I don’t know how they do their valuations, but I DO know that the amount of data they have is very small compared to the data that is available overall. Until the MLS has attributes and history for “granite counter tops”, “cheaply landscaped yard”, “neighbor with crappy fence and mean dog”, and other things that are either apparent in the blurb, the pictures, or a viewing, I can’t see how it can EVER be accurate for a given house.

On the other hand, it *could* be accurate for a neighborhood in general and is perhaps a better tool for evaluating a given ZIP code so you can get an idea of where you might like to live, what the houses look like in general, and how much that area costs compared to other areas.

[speaker]

Consider this:
Zillow is still in its early testing phase. The Zestimate will get better with time. These are the same guys that founded Expedia.com so they know what they are doing.

The best things about Zillow is that it shows you the sales history and most recent property tax. For FREEE!!! This makes it relatively easy to spot the flippers in your neighborhood or the soon to be bankrupt HELOCers.

“End of line.”

[sdrealtor]

Zillow will always be inaccurate in a great deal of cases. One major problem is that the zetimates are based upon what is in the assessors records which in many cases is wrong. For example, my primary residence is listed in the tax assessors records 200 sq ft smaller with 1 less garage and 1 less bedroom than I have. It does not account for my location, view upgrades or yard.

Airline tickets are commodities, essentially all are equal but for the price and (window, middle aisle). Homes are all unique and have many attributes that could never be accounted for by a algorithim.

[carlislematthew]

Homes are all unique and have many attributes that could never be accounted for by a algorithim.

You probably *could* do this with an algorithm, but it would literally take hundreds or thousands of attributes about the house. You’d have to record so much information about the quality of the view, the type of counter top used, the amount of hardware floors and the type and quality of the wood.

Who would record all the information? Well, the sellers of course, or a large independant body sponsered by the government, so the information is bound to be wrong. It will be wrong because it’s subjective. One person’s 8/10 view is another’s 1/10 view. You can’t objectively record subjective information, especially where the collectors of the information are widely dispersed and biased.

I work in the software industry and have a lot of experience in a similar field, but relating to storing information and attributes for music, which again is mostly subjective. A music file has many many less attributes than a house, and it’s still an almost impossible task to try and categorize the music to a level where you can use that information for something useful.

[barnaby33]

Yes but you could split it out along an 80/20 rule. Where 80% of the value is computed by a simple algorithm. Avg price, square footage, #of rooms etc. Then have 20% submitted by a person. That would still give you a rough idea, and cut it down to hundreds of attribs, rather than thousands.

If and when the owner felt like adding in info on added amenities he could do so for a more complete appraisal.

Yes its still subjective, but so are all appraisals and it would get people closer to where they want to be which is narrowing down wide swaths of housing to a value and range that they are interested in.

Josh

[sdrealtor]

Or you could pick up the phone and call a top notch realtor and get the same information without obligation for FREE in a few minutes.

[PD]

I think most people would choose getting info over the internet – no hassle, it is free, no sales pitch, you get updates at midnight and it doesn’t pester you with call-backs.

[nla]

Mine went as high as 960,000 few months ago, then it went down to as low as 900,000. Right now it’s on 918,000.
-peace

[carlislematthew]

I think most people would choose getting info over the internet – no hassle, it is free, no sales pitch, you get updates at midnight and it doesn’t pester you with call-backs.

While there may be a certain element of this kind of behavior in real-estate, I don’t think it’s fair to say that all realtors are like this. My last realtor I used up in Seattle was excellent. If I told him I didn’t want to continue down a particular avenue, he wouldn’t ever mention it again. He was a true professional.

Like any profession that has experienced a large amount of growth, and where there was lots of money to be had, there was certainly a decent sized group of the sleazy type that entered into the field. I think this group will be the first to leave too…

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