Mythbuster: Zillow knows what my home is worth!
It’s time to take some myths and make them go Kaboom.💣
MYTH: I know that my home is worth $X 💰💰 because Zillow says so, and they just, like…get it, man.🤷♂️🥴
TRUTH: Ah, the Zestimate. The longest 4 letter word in a realtor’s vocabulary. The reality is that Zillow doesn’t, in fact, actually really get it (or you) at all, man. Zillow’s admitted margin of error on Zestimates is somewhere between one and ten percent, depending on a bunch of variables. 😳 Do the math on 1-10% and you’ll quickly realize that $20k on your $200k house 🏠 isn’t exactly all that close, and that’s just the STANDARD margin of error. It gets worse. The former CEO, someone who you’d certainly think would be invested in the accuracy of his product, famously had one of his own properties sell for ‼️40% below its Zestimate‼️a few years ago.
In reality, Zillow only knows your house as well as their computers can do math. In order to come up with wildly inaccurate Zestimates for so many properties across the country, they use aggregated data and algorithms to extrapolate value across areas.📊 That means that bad data, recent improvements (or deferred maintenance) to your house, or any number of other factors that can’t be quantified by an algorithm can skew the Zestimate results.📈
Still don’t believe me? Well, try remodeling your kitchen tomorrow and see if your Zestimate changes.🤷♂️
