Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 265 posts

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#211

Post by michaelmrose »

wyattpeak wrote: post #206
michaelmrose wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the lawsuit force them to reveal trade secrets? I don't see how you have any right to know how they arrived at the number they did. I can say publicly that I value your home at $5 and my neighbor bob can say its worth a million dollars. These are both opinions and anyone seriously considering spending half a million or more can consider spending a modest amount on an appraisal.

There's a difference between an opinion proffered by a neighbour and an opinion from a large real-estate company. The reality is people do trust the site, so law should take that into account. If a situation is making life harder for actual people, the fact that their behaviour isn't economically rational is not a good enough reason to ignore the problem.

Zillow is a information company providing a free ballpark estimate of a vast array of properties, not a real estate company. This is an important distinction. Neither party is paying them for an accurate estimate ergo they are not obligated to provide an estimate sufficient for either buyer or seller, which is why both sides are best advised to PAY for an accurate estimate before closing a transactions worth hundreds of thousands.

I'm honestly not seeing the problem here. Don't such people already hire experts to asses value before spending half a million dollars? I'm seeing the claim that inaccurate estimates lead to difficulties selling but I have yet to see the proof. Maybe those having trouble selling really are asking for more money than people are willing to pay.

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#213

Post by imjustsaying »

imjustsaying wrote: post #212

If an algo could predict real estate prices (all of which are unique and based on instantaneous human preferences) with 100% accuracy, any arbitrary human thought would be known.

A driveby downvote is not a valid argument to the contrary of my claim.

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#214

Post by tacostakohashi »

michaelmrose wrote: post #211
wyattpeak wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between an opinion proffered by a neighbour and an opinion from a large real-estate company. The reality is people do trust the site, so law should take that into account. If a situation is making life harder for actual people, the fact that their behaviour isn't economically rational is not a good enough reason to ignore the problem.

Zillow is a information company providing a free ballpark estimate of a vast array of properties, not a real estate company. This is an important distinction. Neither party is paying them for an accurate estimate ergo they are not obligated to provide an estimate sufficient for either buyer or seller, which is why both sides are best advised to PAY for an accurate estimate before closing a transactions worth hundreds…

What is a "real estate company", and how is it different from an "information company"?

Real estate brokers and appraisers also sell information (not real estate).

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#215

Post by vacri »

Here in Australia, underestimating by realty companies is the norm. I watched a friend go through buying a house last year, and some houses were advertised at prices that were below reserve [1]. As in, at auction, the bidding reached the advertised price, but the buyer's floor price hadn't been reached yet, so the house was not 'on the market' yet...

[1] In one case, 80k below reserve. You know you've hit the reserve price, because in my state, the auctioneer is legally required to annouce the house is 'now on the market'

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#216

Post by michaelmrose »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #214
michaelmrose wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zillow is a information company providing a free ballpark estimate of a vast array of properties, not a real estate company. This is an important distinction. Neither party is paying them for an accurate estimate ergo they are not obligated to provide an estimate sufficient for either buyer or seller, which is why both sides are best advised to PAY for an accurate estimate before closing a transactions worth hundreds…

What is a "real estate company", and how is it different from an "information company"? Real estate brokers and appraisers also sell information (not real estate).

When you seek the services of an agent and pay them money to help you buy or sell real estate they represent to you that they are qualified to assess the value of the real estate being bought and sold and are somewhat morally obligated to you by virtue of the money you paid them to provide you with accurate information.

Professional licensing requirements are supposed to ensure they are sort of kind of qualified.

Someone you didn't hire which is providing a ballpark guess on the value of your property to help people do preliminary research before they buy has minimal enough obligation to buyers and none at all to you.

We can see that the obligations of the agents above attach both to the fact that they are brokering 6-7 figure transactions and to the fact that you contracted them. Its hard to imagine what you believe the obligation is supposed to attach to in zillows case.

Its not even clear that regulating zillow according to each individual states laws would accomplish save placing unconstitutional limits on free speech. Plantiff doesn't even want that they want a club to compel zillow's silence or desirable speech. Surely cloaking it in bs doesn't make this any less unconstitutional.

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#217

Post by sorokod »

malandrew wrote: post #42
_m8fo wrote: post #16

You would think real estate would prove to be one of the few real life fields where machine learning would be able to predict the prices pretty accurately. You have: 1. List price 2. "Favorites" on the MLS. 3. Square footage 4. Bedrooms 5. Bathrooms 6. Sold price for nearby properties 7. Sold price for nearby properties relative to their list price And the list goes on... Is it that difficult to predict? Literally th…

There are also non-tangibles like knowing your buyer and how much you can get from them. My mother passed away last year and I handled the home sale as I was the executor of the estate. The buyer was a neighbor who heard about my mother passing away and saw it as an opportunity to buy the house for so his mother could live less than 100 meters from him and help him and his wife with raising their kids. He knew we'd b…

Isn't it the case that the ( economic ) utility of a product has a built-in subjective component?

Not disagreeing​, just saying that volatility is integral to the system.

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#218

Post by gnicholas »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #210
razwall wrote: post #137

Take a look at the law they're suing under, regarding licensing of real estate appraisers ( http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=02250... ). It makes it illegal to "develop a real estate appraisal" without a license. An appraisal is defined as simply "an opinion of value". So if you are driving down the street and say to your spouse, "Look at that house, it's gotta be worth a million bucks," you jus…

> nor does this Act apply to the procurement of an automated valuation model. "Automated valuation model" means an automated system that is used to derive a property value through the use of publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies such as comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations. If that sentence applies, I don't think they really have a cas…

Good point. But what does "procurement" mean in this context? The plain meaning is "obtain", but that doesn't really make sense here. The word isn't used elsewhere in this document but is presumably defined somewhere.

If it is interpreted to mean "use", then the case is a loser as you say. But I wouldn't want to be the lawyer tasked with arguing to the judge that "the legislature meant 'use' but decided to say 'procurement' instead".

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#219

Post by SolarNet »

gnicholas wrote: post #218
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor does this Act apply to the procurement of an automated valuation model. "Automated valuation model" means an automated system that is used to derive a property value through the use of publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies such as comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations. If that sentence applies, I don't think they really have a cas…

Good point. But what does "procurement" mean in this context? The plain meaning is "obtain", but that doesn't really make sense here. The word isn't used elsewhere in this document but is presumably defined somewhere. If it is interpreted to mean "use", then the case is a loser as you say. But I wouldn't want to be the lawyer tasked with arguing to the judge that "the legislature meant 'use' but decided to say 'procu…

I'm not sure I understand your point. By visting the website one is procuring the estimate through an automated model in return for the ads and tracking you agree to by visting. Legal language is straight forward in this case.

Re: Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth

#220

Post by [deleted] »

gnicholas wrote: post #218
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor does this Act apply to the procurement of an automated valuation model. "Automated valuation model" means an automated system that is used to derive a property value through the use of publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies such as comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations. If that sentence applies, I don't think they really have a cas…

Good point. But what does "procurement" mean in this context? The plain meaning is "obtain", but that doesn't really make sense here. The word isn't used elsewhere in this document but is presumably defined somewhere. If it is interpreted to mean "use", then the case is a loser as you say. But I wouldn't want to be the lawyer tasked with arguing to the judge that "the legislature meant 'use' but decided to say 'procu…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN