Zillow.com

From time to time I’m asked my opinion of Zillow.com’s “Zestimate”. Personally I believe Zillow to be a good tool for one to get a general idea of what is happening in the real estate market.

However, I caution homeowners not to put a lot of faith in the Zestimate tool for an individual home. From time to time after I’ve done a comparative market analysis (CMA) for one of my clients, I’ll compare it with Zillow and have found it sometimes high and sometimes low. I feel the accuracy on an individual property is questionable.

Zillow discloses the accuracy of its Zestimate. A link can be found at the bottom of the home page titled “Zestimate Values & Accuracy”. For example, according to their statistics in Seattle, 75% of the time they are within 20% of a home’s value, 51% of the time they are within 10% of a home’s value, and 28% of the time they are within 5% of a home’s value. For this they give themselves a 4 star rating which is their highest rating.

http://www.zillow.com/howto/DataCoverageZestimateAccuracy.htm

I am confident when I say that a Realtor who has knowledge of a neighborhood will provide a much more accurate value of a home.