Does your home have a Zestimate? (UPDATE)

[midjd]

DH and I bought our home in late January of this year. We live out in the boonies so have never had a Zestimate (though I claimed our house, added some pics, etc.) As of this week we now have one - but it is about 1/3 less than the appraised value.

There is a house down the road currently for sale, listed for a bit more than we paid (but it is 2/3 the size of ours, no basement, smaller lot, no trees, and about 20 years older). It is listed for $192K... and its Zestimate is $96K! I'd say it could sell for between $140K and $150K.

So do you use Zillow? Does your home have a Zestimate? Do you think it's too high, too low, or about right? Would the Zestimate vs. asking price affect your offer on a home?

[Deleted]

Our neighborhood/street is filled with unique houses. The one behind me has a huge house (5 bedrooms), fifteen acres of land, and has been on the market for almost three years at $579,000. It started at $799,000, by the way. There is another large house with lots of land (not as much as the other but a lot). Then there are three more houses, including mine that I bought for basically $140,000 (I included closing to make it $142,500) in 2004.

Because of its uniqueness, all of our houses are valued at the tax appraisal price on Zillow. It does list previous sales, but mine is the only one that has ever been sold.

I would LIKE to think it's low. The house on the market for $579,000 is valued on Zillow for $350,000. They aren't getting any offers, it seems, at their current price, but they certainly wouldn't be willing to sell it for the Zillow value.

[resolution]

We look at zillow when we see houses for sale in the community and are curious what they are listed for. Our house has a Zestimate and also a fancy description that the bank put in they were selling it. For the first year they rejected our sale information and had a note that the price we paid was too low so they were leaving it out of their comps for neighbors. However this past year they have lowered their zestimate so it is closer to what we paid and have started including our sale as a comp for neighboring properties. I think the zestimate is pretty accurate now because it is close to what we paid for the house plus the money we have put into it to make it habitable.

ETA the picture they have for our house is about a mile down the road, so they have us in the wrong place but the other info is correct.

[Deleted]

The Z estimates are all over the place. 4 of our 5 properties are pretty unique; either custom or semi-custom and with views or some other unique feature. In the beginning , I thought the Z estimates were a little high. Right now I think one is definitely too low because the algorithm is giving too much weight to a sale in an adjacent subdivision which is quite a bit smaller and on the wrong side of the street (only a partial ocean view compared to our 170 degree view).

I like Zillow for it's comparable listings so I can see what's sold recently (including foreclosure sales) and what's currently for sale.

But I do think that folks who are considering selling really do need to respond to their Z estimate and update their listing with photographs et cetera because prospective buyers (and possibly appraisers) are going to look at it. And in struggling markets who wants to pay too much?

[Deleted]

I looked my house up on zillow. I have no idea how accurate it is, and I'm not sure whether I'm more surprised that it was worth over $100k 6 months ago or that it's only worh $60k something now.

[NoNamePerson]

Zillow uses the same process that we used back in the 70's when I sold real estate. We called it a SWAG appraisal - Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess

[midjd]

That's the other thing - there is a graph estimate of the historical value from 2007 - present. Its highest value was $204K in November 2008, and its lowest value was $128K in February 2011 (<a month after we bought it for $186K). Indiana was pretty exempt from the "bubble", plus our city didn't suffer much, so I'm surprised that the algorithm shows so much fluctuation.

[steff]

I actually looked at both Zestimate and Zillow just last week to see where we (approx) stood. Zestimate had us at $191,000...zillow at $189,000.... we paid $120,000. The highest the house hit was $280,000 the year before it was foreclosed on, which was 2 years before we got it.

There are 4 custom build houses in our neighborhood, ours is one of them. All 4 of the customs are in the $190,000 range. The rest of the neighborhood is in $100,000-130,000 range.

[Deleted]

I hope ours is on the low side but it's not a disaster if it isn't. We paid $242K in 2003 and have put another $40K into it. Some of that was for genuine upgrades, such as enclosing the deck to make it a screened-in porch and putting in granite countertops. Some, such as replacing windows, was more maintenance. Zillow says $275K. We've paid off close to $100K in mortgage principal in addition to the 20% down payment, so we have a lot of equity.

[TheOtherMe]

Mine was (note was) in line with the appraisal for a refi last December. Now, the zestimate shows the value decreasing every month.

[schildi]

I believe that for our house the zestimate may be pretty accurate, including the 10 year history.

[Deleted]

Looking at zillow for where we close in a couple weeks, they have listed all of our model house around 444,000. What they did is obvious - they took the estimate of the house with no view and no yard and placed that value on the same model house sitting on the edge of the mountain with incredible views. I feel like such a "sucker" paying $510,000 for the larget lot in the development (15,0000 sq ft verus 8,000 average), corner lot, edge of the moutain.. I guess mine will be worth 444k too when we close.

[dancinmama]

I agree with the SWAG theory regarding the Zillow estimates. Our home is one of the smaller in the neighborhood, but is a custom design with quality materials and craftsmanship and has awesome views in the back. I believe Zillow and the county tax assessor go pretty much by age, sq. ft of the home, and sq. ft. of the lot, cuz, well, they have nothing else to base their Zestimates/assessments on.

And although I am so sorry for others whose home values have taken a dive (like ours), we are looking at the positive side of it. Because property values have dropped so much, so have our property taxes which saves us thousands of dollars every year. Now if we needed to sell, I'm sure we'd feel a lot differently.

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

I think our Zillow estimate (as depressing as it is) is reasonably accurate for our home and neighborhood.

[alabamagal]

Ours is low, but our neighborhood seems pretty accurate. We purchased our house 25 years ago, so definitely no recent sales. Zillow has us at about the same value as our surrounding houses. All the houses were similar when they were built in the 70s, but we added on a large master suite to ours, so our house has quite a bit more square feet than surrounding. The added master suite is in the zillow listing, but the estimate doesn't seem to account for it.

[Deleted]

Ours is about right. How close is that, you ask? Probably within 10-20%.

[crockpottin]

I think our Zestimate is a little bit low, though that may be a result of sales prices the last few times it was sold. When my DH bought our house, the previous owners had really let the maintenance go, to the point where it became a marginally habitable extreme fixer-upper. Now that it looks like a place you'd actually want to live in, I assume its actual sales price would be higher. Not that we plan to move anytime soon, not after all that work on the house!

[Deleted]

God, I hope the zestimate is low on our house. Otherwise it's worth our mortgage.

[CarolinaKat]

Zillow thinks that my barn is my house

[CarolinaKat]

It also thinks my neighbor's barn is a 3 bed/2 bath house... and his house is a 1 bed 1 bath house?

[Deleted]

Ok, so I know the price of my house (under contract to be sold) and the house we're buying. Not totally sure how much of the value is based on the listing price, but here's what I noticed.

My house is REALLY accurate based on what it went under contract for. The zestimate is literally within $300 of what we are under contract for.

The house we purchased has a zestimate of $462K and we bought it for $500K. That's not too surprising to me to be honest. The people prior to us bought in 2007 for $555K and did a lot of work to it, but nothing that would be reflected in the zestimate value necessarily. windows, deck, fence, landscaping, finished a 3-season room, new a/c, radiant floor, etc.

[midjd]

Yeah, I had to claim our house and move the map point from some random spot in the woods to the actual house.

I remember having some issues with the comps the appraiser used... the 3 comp houses were all on 0.5 acre lots (or less), while we have almost 6 acres. I don't think a house on a 0.5 acre lot in a subdivision is comparable to a house out in the woods on 6 acres, even if the home itself is the same size... but apparently Zillow and our appraiser do

[shanendoah]

The Zillow estimate for our house is on the low side (but probably the more realistic side) of what we could get for our house. I'd hope to get about $7k more than they list.
Our mortgage company uses similar software, but they appriase our house at about $25k more, which I know is high. I'd expect to get about $18k less than they list.

However, living in the Seattle area, Zillow is always going to be much more accurate for us, as this is one of the markets it was started in and where they have the most knowledge. But, their sattelite photos of the neighborhood are at least 2 years old, as they still show the taj mahal next to us as being under construction.

[hurley1980]

Bloody Hell I sure hope Zillow is low! I refuse to believe that my house dropped 20% of its value in one week! I bought in Oct 2009 for 130k, last week it was at 104k, which I could live with, but now its down to $84k. At this rate, its going to be worth about $2 by next year!

Luckily, I have no intentions of selling the place, and when I upgrade to a bigger house, it will just become a rental. On the positive side, Zillow says I could rent my house out for a buttload more than I pay for mortgage/insurance/utilities. So at least I got that going for me....

[thyme4change]

Our zestimate is probably low. I'm not sure by how much. I really don't understand the logic. They have the house 4 down from mine and mine at the same value, but ours in 500 sqaure feet bigger with an extra bedroom and an extra bathroom. They have the house 3 down from us at $120k more. Their square footage is 200 larger than ours with an extra bathroom. So, no real logic as far as I can tell. But, whatever. My neighbor is a real estate agent and has been selling housing in our 'hood for 20 years. He just sold the house around the corner from ours for $120k more than our zestimate. Granted - that house was awesome, so I know we aren't worth that. But, he says we could "easily" get about $50k more than what is listed on Zillow. That's a 20% difference, so pretty sizeable.

I wouldn't actually know what it was worth unless I sold it, but for fun and my peace of mind, I will take the realator's estimate. That way I don't have more into this house than it is worth - even if it doesn't matter.

[muttleynfelix]

I just looked. I think it is pretty close in line to what it would sell for if we needed to get out in less than 6 months. It was appraised for a our refi last year and appraised about $8k higher. It has our house right, but is pointing to the next door neighbors house.

The good news is that it had who was listing the neighbors house for foreclosure and I now know that it will be auctioned off on July 18th.

[muttleynfelix]

Oh on this historic value (of my house built in 2006), it has the high of $220k and low of $70k within 6 months of each other in 2008.... nevermind that prices never bubbled or tanked here. I can remember looking at zillow back then and they never even had my house existing.

[Deleted]

"Oh on this historic value (of my house built in 2006), it has the high of $220k and low of $70k within 6 months of each other in 2008.... nevermind that prices never bubbled or tanked here."

That's what surprised me. I paid $75k 10 years ago. Over that period according to zillow the price really fluctuated but shot up in January of this year to a little over $100k. Now, a few months later, it's just over $60k.

The sudden increase followed by a $40k decrease in value a few months later might make more sense to me if we were talking about a house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Besides, if anybody ever would've paid $100k for it, I doubt if it would've been in January 2011.

Doesn't really matter though. I don't plan on selling anytime soon.

[Sum Dum Gai]

We bought our place last June for $280k. Zestimate is $290,700 right now. It's hard to say how accurate that is, but it's probably pretty close. I'd say the house would sell right now for anywhere from $10k less than we paid to $10k more, and I wouldn't be willing to bet on one way or the other.

ETA - The Zillow chart only goes back to July 1st 2006 and they have the house worth $686k... people were fraking crazy here. I feel like we overpaid a little bit... I mean it was a fair price for this area at the time, but the amount we paid for a pretty average house still makes me a little sick. I literally can't even imagine paying $650k for a normal subdivision house out here. Maybe near a beach, or something with amazing mountain views, but a typical subdivision house out in the boonies for that much??? You'd have to be smoking crack.

[hurley1980]

Jun 20, 2011 12:10:40 GMT -5 Sum Dum Gai said:

ETA - The Zillow chart only goes back to July 1st 2006 and they have the house worth $686k... people were fraking crazy here. I feel like we overpaid a little bit... I mean it was a fair price for this area, but the amount we paid for a pretty average house still makes me a little sick.

People were crazy up here too! My house was valued at $260k in July of 2006. Its a 3 bd/1 ba, 1150 sf house in a lower-middle class suburb of Sacramento. Anyone who would have paid that price had to have been one beer short of a six pack!