My quick review of Zillow.com
As you may be aware, the founder of Expedia.com recently put into beta a site called Zillow.com. This site aims to give homeowners free estimates of what their home is worth.
The site doesn’t claim to be 100% accurate, and states that in the Twin Cities metropolitan area they have a selling price median error of 6.5%. This means that half of the homes listed are within 6.5% inaccurate, and half of the homes listed are over 6.5% accurate. Doing a quick math, that means if you have $200,000 house, there is a 50/50 chance zillow.com will be off in their estimate by $13,000.
I did a quick search of my house, and since it has been over a year since we bought it, I decided to compare it against the county’s most recent assessed value of the home. Zillow.com’s price was lower by 15%. Digging deeper, I looked at the details for the home, and noticed that the site failed to note a bathroom the house contains, as well as the second story, cutting in half my finished square feet.
Although zillow.com has promise, and collaborative tools that may make information more accurate in the future, I wouldn’t use it as a pricing tool to sell your home just yet. Especially in today’s “buyers market”, it is important to price your home correctly as soon as you put it on the market.
