Inaccurate Zillow ‘Zestimates’ a Source of Conflict Over Home Prices
on February 8, 2016
Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff (pictured here in his downtown Seattle office), says Zestimates are “a good starting point” but that nationwide Zestimates have a “median error rate” of about 8%. (source: Ellen M. Banner / TNS).
When “CBS This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell asked the chief executive of Zillow recently about the accuracy of the website’s automated property value estimates — known as Zestimates — she touched on one of the most sensitive perception gaps in American real estate.
Shoppers, sellers and buyers routinely quote Zestimates to realty agents — and to one another — as gauges of market value. If a house for sale has a Zestimate of $350,000, a buyer might challenge the sellers’ list price of $425,000. Or a seller might demand to know from potential listing brokers why they say a property should sell for just $595,000 when Zillow has it at $685,000.
Disparities like these are daily occurrences and, in the words of one realty agent who posted on the industry blog ActiveRain, they are “the bane of my existence.” Consumers often take Zestimates “as gospel,” said Tim Freund, an agent with Dilbeck Real Estate in Westlake Village. If either the buyer or the seller won’t budge off Zillow’s estimated value, he told me, “that will kill a deal.”
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Inaccurate Zillow ‘Zestimates’ a Source of Conflict Over Home Prices
For the full L.A. Times article Visit: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-harney-20150208-story.html
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