At the risk of sounding overly sarcastic, most -- not all, but most -- streets have homes on either side.
For instance, waterfront homes with deep-water docks generally sit across the street from homes which may have a sliver of waterview. Some of the homes across the street have no waterviews at all, despite their relative nearness to the water.
Despite their location on the same street or in the same neighborhood, these homes (deep-water vs. non-waterfront) have signicantly different values..........Right?!?!
Yet, Zillow seems to treat all these homes the same.
My jaw dropped recently as I was looking at recent "similar sales" to my current deep-water listing just outside historic Beaufort, SC. My listing has 8 feet of water at low tide. The threshold to categorize property as deep-water is 3 feet, so my 1900-square foot listing at 2229 Trask Parkway has almost three times the required amount of water.
So why does Zillow and its almighty Zestimate tool use non-waterfront homes as comparable sales? In one case, the comparable sale had no house!!
This is partly because the last sale of my listing was to the current owners, who bought the lot and built the home. SO, the Zestimate is getting at least part of its pricing juice from this $218,000 lot sale a decade ago.
Why can't Zillow get this right?!?!
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