Have you ever gone online to Zillow and checked the value of your home?
How accurate is it?
I’m gonna share with you what I think about the Zillow’s Zestimate and how accurate they are when it comes to giving value to your home.
See the way Zillow compiles its information is they check out properties that are available, properties that have sold, and try to give you a price per square foot. The only problem with that scenario is when a house sells that is beaten up or foreclosure, that just throws off the whole price per square foot off and it can really affect the value of the property.
That’s where the issues are.
Now I’ve seen it where Zillow has been pretty accurate where a lot of the homes in the neighborhood have sold fairly at a good price or fairly where the value is. I’ve also seen it where it is a hundred thousand dollars off or two hundred thousand dollars off the price. So it really varies.
What it doesn’t take into account is the condition of the property and this is so important.
If your house has granite countertops and is your house is in great condition. If you’ve done a lot of remodeling, but the neighbor’s house that sold didn’t have any of that. So when it combines all its information, the price is gonna be inaccurate. So, the condition is very important.
Another thing that it doesn’t take into account is if your house has a lake view, and your neighbor’s house doesn’t have a lake view, there’s people that will pay 20K, 40K, even 50K for a real nice lake view, as opposed to a property that doesn’t have it. So those are things that throw the value off.
Now, I’ve also seen it where there’s a great house in a great neighborhood and across the street there are luxury homes, just one street away. Newer homes. And then it’s giving you the value of those homes compared to some of the luxury ones. So it could be really off.
When it comes to valuing your home, the things I take into account are: Condition. I go in and look at a property. I look at the square footage to make sure that I’m comparing it to properties that are similar in square footage. I also look at the year built, and then every upgrade that the house has had.
New windows. A new roof. Or things that have you done to the house will affect the value. So I try to find properties that have those characteristics and then pretty much, value it that way.
I had a client that called me not too long ago and he did an appraisal on his house. He was doing a refinance. And when the appraisal came in it cam $200,000 under the value of the Zillow estimate. I asked him why didn’t you call me? Oh, I went on Zillow and I checked out the value there and it cost him $450. If he would’ve called me directly, I would have saved them the money but I was curious as to why was so off. And in that particular property, everything that was on the market was a little bit overpriced.
There were not too many homes on the market, and that’s probably the reason why agents priced a little bit more expensive. Everything that has sold had sold a while back. And the appraisal obviously, went out and looked at properties that had sold, he didn’t look at what was available. So Zillow Zestimate started looking at a lot of the properties that were available and gave him a value of the home based on what was available, and not so much of what has sold. In reality, an appraisal is always going to look at closed sales.
So keep that in mind. When you want the true value for your house, give us a call, we’ll look at it. It’s something that we offer free to our friends, clients, and anyone that is curious about how much their home is currently worth.