Popular Web Sites for
Free Home Value Estimates
The three following web sites provide
consumers with estimates of a home’s value. They are fun to use, but their
estimates can be very misleading. Even Zillow recommends their estimates
as a starting point, not the final word on a house’s value. See the
article on Zillow accuracy
and the user comments below.
Nothing can substitute for an informed
Realtor’s Comparative Market Analysis. Full-time Realtors have seen the
properties being compared and can make judgments based on the land and
house details of the compared properties that neither the computerized
estimates nor appraisers can.
www.Zillow.com
www.realestate.yahoo.com/Homevalues uses Zillow for its estimates.
www.Reply.com
www.RealEstateABC.com
User Comments
The following are comments from Zillow
users, but they apply to all of these services. The source for these
comments is
Alexa, an Amazon.com company.
Not even close!
Tried my house, my parents house, my friends house, my brothers condo....
the values that zillow suggested were an absolute joke. When it comes to
the market value of real estate, nothing beats knowing the details of the
subject property and the comparable properties.
A Zoke
This site is very over hyped. It claimed a house I sold last year for
$195K was worth over $300K; not even close.
There are so many variables that
come into play when determining the value of a property that it is
virtually impossible to accurately price a property without seeing it.
Perhaps it works for some areas but it doesn't work in Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
I know that the founder of expedia
started this site and claims it will do to real estate what expedia did to
travel. First, I don't think expedia had much to do with it, the internet
did. Perhaps if it was helping you get the best price for a car it could
work but being off by 5% on a property worth $500K means your off by $25K
and that's being generous on the accuracy of this site.
While it's a good concept the Zestimate's provided by
Zillow are way overZealous.
Not Zantastic!
EVERY time I go onto the site, it
tells me there's an error. I've done this from different computers too!
Also, it lists my house as only having 1.5 baths, when it really has 2.5.
So, the Zestimate is out of whack. I don't know where the site got 1.5
baths‑‑ I've never seen this misinformation on any listing, tax record, or
appraisal. In general, there are far better sites to use for home value
estimates... I highly recommend bankofamerica.com. Go to the "Real Estate
Center." Not only is it easy to use, but it's really accurate. I used it to
find comparable sales for my past mortgage deals as a Loan Officer!
Zillow The Impossible Dream
In my personal opinion, in any
marketplace there are two realities to valuations; first the valuator must
have local intimate knowledge and second, both buyers and sellers must
believe in the valuations.
Zillow meets neither of these
realities. Because it cannot really know the neighborhood, it frequently and
randomly appears to over value and under value the actual market value by
more than a 10% error rate, which is no small number of dollars. Beyond
that, in trying to arrive at a single value instead of a range, the buyer
will often see the valuation as too high, while the seller often finds it
too low. In my opinion Zillow is therefore likely to increase the apparent
disparity more than reduce it.
I only have one point to make about
zillow. Its difficult to take them seriously when they use assessor pricing
which doesn’t tend to reflect market pricing.
There is absolutely no substitute for
driving through a neighborhood and walking through a home. Zillow isn’t
useless, and it’s interesting to see what it does, but only an idiot would
add or eliminate candidate properties based on what they see at Zillow.
Regardless, the technology is cool.
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