Zillowing the Zillow!
Yep, I actually decided to do this. You may ask, exactly what I was doing. Well, zillowing is a verb I've invented to describe the action of going on-line to check your home value through a site called zillow.com which will give you what is known as a zestimate of your homes value. Since, as far as I can tell from my research and dictionary searches, both zillow and zestimate are not established nouns in the English language, this calls for an invention of a verb to ascribe meaning to the actions performed in tandem with these newly minted terms.
Being a real estate broker, I make it my business to be astute about the correct valuation of property. This activity can be described as capricious as it involves the skills and investigatory acumen of a statistician, the nuanced inclinations of a researcher and the exquisite artistry and discriminatory palate for distinction and public sentiment of a gossip columnist to determine what any given home listed in a community should be listed for at any particular period of time. Oh, I forgot to mention, the skills of a politician to deliver this information when it is not presumed to be very palatable to a seller's sensibilities with dexterity and hopefully persuasion strong enough to create a saleable listing!
So, my zillowing began on-line in the most obvious place, I zillowed my own home. After all, this was one place that I could presume a high level of expertise having supervised the construction details a few years ago. I was surprised to find that with 67 Million homes being searched by the Zillow, they could not locate my home. I was perplexed; even Map quest now knew that I existed and certainly every catalog company, utility company and junk mail company known to man seemed to have no problems whatsoever locating me.
Undaunted, I zillowed a neighbors home to check to see whether my entire community had somehow been the victim on an on-line alien abduction and Voila, I found out that my home was indeed on zillow.com, albeit with a wrong address. Apparently, although our address had been changed by the county several years ago, the zillow computers had not registered this fact. This gave me some concern as proper identification of the parcel or property you are marketing or selling is Real Estate 101...thou must not sell thy neighbors property inadvertently by virtue of improper identification.
Relieved to have located my home, I checked the zestimate. it was duly noted that as I, the homeowner, had not updated my data zillow.com was doing the best it could with the information it had access to. Obviously, they had not yet contacted me and I was pleased to see an invitation to update my information to improve the accuracy of the database. The two most recent sales had occurred within the past 3 years and the home that had sold just prior to my home being built was now just a little under a decade old.
I was surprised to see how arbitrary and sometimes downright inaccurate the analysis of my neighborhood was. The homes that were given as comparables were often much older bungalows, literally light years apart in terms of value, so much so that any appraiser worth his license would have been embarrassed to list them as "comparables". My much newer home with more square footage was tens of thousands of dollars below the value of a home that was significantly older but which was the most recent and appropriate comparable. I noted ruefully that it would have been nice if our county property tax assessor agreed with the zestimate when it came time to pay my property taxes, but alas...he was not fooled.
The most extraordinary surprise occurred when I tried to correct what I knew to be obvious flaws in the zillows zestimate from an intimate knowledge of my home's interior and layout. Zillow.com had invited my input as the homeowner and I was happy to perform this community service. My attempts to enhance the accuracy of the zestimate ended up deducting a whopping $60,000 off my value. Now, I knew that I was dealing with a remarkably deceptive system which was purporting to provide a level of information and knowledge that it could not consistently deliver and most disturbingly might not accurately evaluate even when it was given additional data.
This gave me real pause for concern. I thought of all my clients who had or were in the process of selling their homes and future homeowners who would be marketing their homes within the next year. How could they sift through the overwhelming media hype and reach an appropriate conclusion given what I as a seasoned professional had just experienced first hand. It should be noted, that Zillow.com does recommend that you consult a Realtor and now I knew why. Serious financial damage could occur to a most valuable asset, your home equity, if you came to the wrong conclusion.
Recently, I came upon this post on a Blog from an individual who deals with condominiums. Apparently, if you own a condominium, Zillow.com can only evaluate your entire building and gives this as the value of your unit. Hmm.... This also creates a challenge if your zestimate includes such a building as a comparable due to its proximity to your home location.
Well, I decided to test my zillowing skills on a number of my listings, holding the zestimate with the respect I would give to a proverbial "grain of salt". Sometimes, Zillow's zestimate indicated that I was on target with regards to pricing and sometimes it decided I was not. The comparables used to make this determination were sometimes not even in the same community or neighborhood, which made it amazing that they sometimes got the average prices right!
What concerned me the most was the prices I saw for homes sold by Homeowners on-line through Zillow for 50% or less than their neighborhood. And, there were a significant number of these in their database. I wondered if these former owners truly understood the extent to which they had lost money. This is even more disturbing given the foreclosure crisis in many parts of the country. I am sure that if I had gone to any of these owners and said, here's a bucket full of dollars equivalent to half the value of your home, would you like to join me in a money burning party or perhaps we could just throw the money out your windows, they would regard me with something several degrees below disgust.
Obviously, I do not know the details of the homeowners who choose to sell their homes so far below market value, perhaps they weren't even humans...maybe they were organizations such as banks who were ridding themselves of foreclosed properties. However, I am reminded that my obligation as a professional Realtor to my home owner/seller is to sell their home for the highest possible price, at the least inconvenience to them in the least possible time is an increasingly valuable service. For in zillowing, I learned that data can mislead, and there are some things a computer just can't do right if at all!
For further research on on-line services to assist in the determination a home's value, you may investigate the links below:
Or you can contact me on-line at http://www.auduhomes.com/ or info@auduhomes.com to obtain professional counsel regarding a wise approach in considering how best to utilize information and technology to market your home intelligently. This may include an on-line marketing service as a part of your strategy. We will work with you to determine what makes sense for your home in your community! Lola Audu, CRS GRI an associate Broker with Audu Real Estate has earned the prestigious E-Pro Designation from the National Association of Realtors for competence and training in on-line transactions
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