What Do You Think Of Zillow.com? Homeowners, Please Check It Out.

[turbo6bar]

Originally posted by HardDrive
Seemed a bit high for my house, but maybe its just worth more than I think!

Looks like it's time for you to do a cash-out refi and buy some toys. Keep the American economy rolling.

[RANDY P]

don't forget the Neg-AM too. All about the payment!

I'm kidding of course..

rjp

[RANDY P]

Originally posted by RANDY P
don't forget the Neg-AM too. All about the payment!

I'm kidding of course..

rjp

EDIT: I'd spend the equity on gold chains and an Escalade... Gotta keep up the street rep!

rjp

[LeeH]

It's a bit low for our house, but our street has a unique valuation situation. Our side of the street backs to a mountain preserve. The people across the street from us back to a major road. In theory, our side should have a serious lot premium for backing to the hillside. The houses across from us should take a hit for backing to the road. Zillow.com, of course, just averages out the sales for our entire street.

[GDSOB]

The Zillow values on my street are off by about 10% for no apparent reason. The time graph shows prices declining over the past year. We've had a flat market with prices at last years levels and sales data supports this. I don't know if they are applying a national trend to our market, but we have not seen the value drop that the site shows.

I like the website. It's got a lot of nice features & tools, but the ability to determine a value in every market is suspect. The valuation of real estate is a subjective process and even the best of appraisals may not find an appropriate market value at any point in time. They need some buttons such as "owner has given up any attempt at maintenance" or "house purchased at asking price because buyers kid live in the neighborhood" in order to really determine market value.

We do a market analysis during our listing process and have the seller look at live MLS and courthouse data while looking at comparables. The seller ALWAYS overprices his house and they always think theirs is the best house in the area. When we look at real numbers, we start grief counseling since they have already mentally spent the inflated equity in the house. Lately I've been showing them the Zillow number just for the shock effect...

[red-beard]

Appears to be based on the Tax maps and the data is from 2003! My house does not even appear on the map and the values assigned show either sale values or prop+improvement values that the builderused to pay taxes.

[VINMAN]

The data on my current house I bought a yr ago,seems to be a few yrs old. The value of my last house I was in is pretty current.

Nice to know I own the highest assesed house in my area.