sellsius° Zillow Poll Results In
Filed Under: Industry News
Speaking of polls… Check out the results of the Zillow poll on sellsius° real estate blog.
They tend to show not much trust in Zillow’s Zestimates (75% of buyers and sellers say they don’t trust Zillow), but I’d put this down to the sellsius° readership (and potential pool of respondents) being heavily weighted from those in the Real Estate community.
I think the general population, at large, has a much greater tolerance for the Zillow numbers.
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Joseph Ferrara | Sep 1, 2006 | Reply
Re: Consumers & zillow
If negative real life stories circulate & get any press like the one discussed at NYHouses4Sale http://tinyurl.com/ndzx5
referencing the Realty Times article
“Seller gets zillowed”
http://tinyurl.com/qjsd5
zillow will have a public image problem. That would be a big problem because those are the eyeballs that count for zillow.
Worse than having an unzillowable home is getting zillowed when you try to sell it.
PS Thanks Joel for the link to the poll
Have a great Labor Day weekend.
jf.sellsius | Sep 2, 2006 | Reply
Re: Consumers tolerance for zillow numbers: a crack in the armor?
Have you seen this article by Blanche Evans, Editor of Realty Timea?
“Seller gets zillowed”
http://tinyurl.com/qjsd5
Also recent comments in zillow blog AUg 23-25 by an unhappy owner
http://www.zillowblog.com/zillow_blog/2006/08/elvis_home_beco.html
It is only a matter of time before a lawsuit addresses the consequences of publishing inaccurate values of someone’s property which impacts their ability to market & sell their property. It is one thing to provide public data (as Property Shark does) & quite another to extrapolate a value.
TL | Jun 13, 2007 | Reply
I dunno. Zillow is pretty upfront about the range of values your home might be worth. My house has a +/- range of around 10-15%. And the price looks about right.
A friend of mine had his home “professionally” appraised a few years ago when he refinanced. The appraiser claimed to have driven by the house, but he lied. They live on a remote country road, and their dogs bark at everything that drives by. Not surprisingly, the appraisal was way off. My friend had to call the bank and pay to have the appraisal repeated by someone else.
A few weeks ago I met an appraiser at an open house in my neighborhood. He told me the house we were visiting was listed 10% too high. I asked him what he though about our neighborhood prices in general, and he said, “I tell people that if you’re only curious about the value of your home, save your money and just go to Zillow. It’s pretty close to the right price given that it can’t take into account your remodelling or new landscaping or whatever. Obviously, if you want a bank loan, you’ll need a real appraisal.”
SO, I think that all this negative press about Zillow is just sour grapes from Realty bottom-feeders. Given the number of desperate-sounding freebies I get from agents in my mailbox, we must have a HUGE glut of hungry real estate agents in Seattle. The GOOD agents and GOOD appraisers know Zillow is no threat to them, and in fact helps them educate buyer and sellers with unreasonable expectations.
Note that the “Seller gets zillowedâ€? example above is from 2006. You have been able to fix home facts on Zillow for a long time now. My house was listed as 4 brd 1 story instead of 3 brd, 2 story. Why? Because the county tax records are wrong! That is hardly Zillow’s fault.
That said, I do wonder about Zillow’s business model. They’ve certainly never made any money from me, even though they’ve helped me plan a house purchase.
-TL