How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#201

Post by quadrangle » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #109

20years wrote: post #54

Realtors who feel threatened by Zillow love to complain about Zestimates. Zillow has made it clear time and time again that they are not 100% accurate and even allow homeowners to edit them. Zestimates are a tool that homeowners like to use. Zillow knows that. Good Realtors won't feel threatened by it but instead leverage it to provide prospects with a much more complete and accurate estimate. Realtors need to stop b…

Zillow deserves a fair share of the blame because they prominently feature a single number with dollar-level precision and bury the caveats multiple clicks away on a separate page. Some basic UI changes could avoid all of that: e.g. instead of showing $123,456, show a range like $115,000-135,000, and keep the last few digits at zeros based on their estimated error rates. Similarly, their graphs could use shading to m…

As silly as it is to say this, people (you?) should contact them and suggest these things.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#202

Post by jedberg » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 6:03 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #200

jedberg wrote: post #127

> If you excluded trust sales and probate sales or family-to-family type Quit Claim transfers (where the property is transferred at a considerably lower value from its market value) shouldn't the Zestimate reset to the exact amount of the property's last sold price? No, it should not. My personal example: When I bought my house, I bought it for 20% less than what Zillow said. But Zillow would have been right on the m…

I thought you could create an account to claim your home and add info about updates to boost your estimate?

You can, but the point is that my estimate was based on average condition but my house was below average. There is no way to edit your stuff to tell it that something is worse than average, only better than average.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#203

Post by jungrothmorton » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #189

jungrothmorton wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have free trials of our valuation product, Value Report: https://www.housecanary.com/product-value-report

When do you plan to add support for multi-units? I have a duplex...

We're working on getting all of our single family residence products where we want them before we move into multi. I don't have any timeline for when that would happen.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#204

Post by URSpider94 » Tue, Dec 06, 2016, 11:38 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #173

URSpider94 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends. In the Bay Area these days, sellers will usually only take offers with zero contingencies (because they can). Even if you do get a financing contingency in your offer and the deal falls through because of a low appraisal, there's almost always a back-up offer waiting in the wings that can cover the low appraisal with an additional downpayment (the bank doesn't really care about if the house appraises…

That's really playing with fire. Good RE agent would tell their client so. Even if you're rich and buying in cash, at least inspection contingency is a must, but otherwise unless you have tons of money and don't really care for nasty surprises inspection could uncover - zero contingency is the riskiest bet one can make in one's life. My opinion, if you're on the market where sellers won't accept a contingent offer, i…

Usually, the seller provides an inspection report performed in advance. It's a big leap (I did this a year ago ...) and my Realtor is as old-school as they come, but if you want a single-family property in a hot area, it seems to be table stakes.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#205

Post by morganvachon » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 6:00 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #147

morganvachon wrote: post #143

I looked my house up on Zillow and it is showing an estimate of about $80k. My homeowner's insurance has it covered up to $75k, the county tax assessor lists the FMV as about $50k, and I owe $37k on it. My own estimate is about the same as the tax assessor's, and I wouldn't ask more than $50k when it comes time to sell it, given the work it needs to get it up to the Zillow estimate in my eyes. Looking at other houses…

Offtopic, but I had to chuckle a little: Bay Area house prices have gotten my mind so clouded that I instantly thought you were missing an extra zero on each of those dollar values. I had to re-read it twice until it dawned on me that there are other places out there...

Atlanta isn't the cheapest area, but yes it's much better than the coasts. You don't even have to leave Georgia to find expensive housing; if my property were in Savannah it would be three times as expensive.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#206

Post by sixdrum » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

hnal943 wrote: post #153

sixdrum wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not drop a zero. He paid cash.

is it a nuclear waste dumping ground? What's the mitigating factor?

In the country and needed about $10k of renovations. Sold as-is. It may end up being worth $200k, if he's lucky. Zillow is just incredibly far off.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#207

Post by Terretta » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 12:52 PM UTC

Really dumb but fixable flaw in the algo: I bought my home from a mother and daughter who each owned half. Town hall filed the two transactions on the same afternoon.

Zillow counts it as two data points at half price!

It's the only sale on the property so they have two half price "historical" inputs to the Zestimate, and that makes the real listing price seem nuts to an Internet home buyer.

They refuse to correct the data, insisting it sold twice at full price on the same day instead of two halves, and saying it's on me to get the town hall to reflect it as a single transaction, which it was not.

Re: How Bad Are Zillow “Zestimates”?

#208

Post by joeax » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #199

joeax wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bro-in-law became a real estate agent a couple years ago. Recently we were discussing Zillow, and he went into a tirade about how terrible it is. I just mentioned that it's a good tool to gauge the price trends of my neighborhood, but he began countering with canned, carefully scripted responses that sounded like indoctrination from his broker/employer. I just sighed, before the topic turned to how important it is…

What were the arguments for the 6%? There is a broker in the Bay Area who advertisers that they take half that but the complaints against them see to point to the fact that you'll only get offers from other affiliated agents, and many agents won't share the listing with clients if they can avoid it because they want their full commission. I'm the Bay Area I feel like a seller's agent is grossly overpaid for what is o…

I've sold houses using discounted brokers and he hates that. He said that buyer agents will dissuade buyers from looking at houses offering less than "standard 3%" to the listing agent (another protectionist tactic).

I countered that I don't care. In this day and age buyers are savvy enough to jump on Zillow and Redfin and find my house, and they will demand they see it. If I hired a buyer agent and they tried to talk me out of showing a house over a commission I'd fire them right there.