I bought my house with significant remodeling done to it - they gutted the interior and started from scratch. Anyway, I'd say the thing is accurate if I tag on the wholesale price of the remodeling. Which doesn't seem to be reflected at all in the pricing.
Thanks great site. This is what the internet should be used for How did they get all that data scanned in? Incredible... Michael B.
Let's call a spade a spade. This is a site designed to sell advertising, not provide accurate "real time" pricing data. Using this site to make informed real estate decisions would be like using yesterday's price bars to make day-trading decisions today. Robert Campbell
Also I think many of you are missing hte point that it is based on tax assessed value which has nothing to do in many cases with actual market value. Also it is 2005 tax assessed value which in many places is done at the beginning of the year. So the values are about a year old in many cases until they are updated.
Not exactly. Although they may take assessed values into consideration, the value is based on recent sales. My house appraised for $290,000 back in August 2005. As of yesterday, www.zillow says my house is now worth $292,500. I checked some other addresses and they were pretty close to actual value. Google "auomated valuation model" for more info.
Well mine was my 2005 tax assessed value and 2 other people who looked it up said the same. Therefore it really is a crapshoot on how they are coming up with the values. For me at least and 2 others it was tax assessment. Fair value was well above that.
Well, I am glad to see a site like this. Lets get those high commissioned RE agents OUT of the game... Michael B.
In case people havent noticed different areas have different levels of coverage. Its explained here: http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.z Obviously if they are using nearly-useless tax assessment data only then its not going to be that helpful however in areas like mine where they are using current sales data its pretty damn cool. I can look current recent sales data on my country govt web site but the way that Zillow overlays it with map data makes it much easier to look around.