Zillow.Com How Accurate Are They?

I would say that Zillow is not local, just statistical. There is no way to place value without previewing the home's attributres and the location first hand.

Douglas, I explain that Zillow obtains their info from our county records and therefore is for the most part inaccurate, my home in county records states it has 3 bedrooms 1 bath and it is a 5 bedroom 2 bath home

great post. I was just interviewed by inside east sacramento regarding that topic. araesearch has found that zillow can be as much as 25% off of actual market value

Zillow will take past sales information & use it to calculate another homes value. As Realtors we don't just report the information; instead we interpret it based on our knowledge of the local market & of the homes being used for comparison. This provides a much more accurate picture. 

I find that zillow is only close when there are plenty of sales in an established large neighborhood built by one builder with a set amount of floorplans.  Whew that was a mouthful. But thats what I find.  If the home is custom, forget it.  If the neighborhood is small, forget it.  If there is more than one builder, forget it. If there are no similar floorplans forget it.  Otherwise its not bad.  All joking aside, I would tell the seller that although zillow provides some useful information as an agent you have to gather your infomation from several avenues of information before you come up with the homes value, as an appraiser would.

Zillow does not take into consideration condition of the property or neighborhood location. I looked up my home a while back and the Zillow marker was on a house four doors down the street. It is a statistical database as opposed to valid comps.

Good Question!