Be Careful When Adding a Listing To Zillow

It is unacceptable that, as the owner of a home, I cannot remove my property from the zillow website.

I am working on a class action suit agaqinst Zillow, we will eventually take them out, In the meantime

tell everyone you know not to use them. They are a cheap Internet SCAM.

How is that class action going. I want to be involved. Lousy stinkin Zillow has a house 100 sq feet smaller than mine with less upgrades and a dinky deck for more than mine!!!! I have a better green belt view, panoramic mountain views, and huge deck and these zillow guys have the other house higher!!! Just on sq ft alone mine should be 12K higher than the other one!!! How is that for accuracy!!! Sue the bas....

I am a real estate broker and I NEVER entered my listed property on Zillow.  It showed up (through the MLS?) on the website and the zestimate is over $100k less than the CMA analysis I completed through the Sandicor MLS for my clients.  I claimed the property and tried to fix the discrepancy but the program would not let me add comps for my listing (as the "my estimate" option claims you will be able to do). 

Also, when you call customer service, a recording tells you to email them with concerns and disconnects the line.  I have sent 3 emails and flagged the page for problems but I have only received one email response that basically stated they could do nothing to help me!  I am still trying to resolve the issue. 

Hi Karen, Rachel from Zillow here. You can email me directly at rachelr at zillow dot com. If you send me the address, I can see how the listing ended up on our site.

Here is a video about how to add comparables for creating "my estimate"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDEVM1s_uxY

 

As someone who used zillow when buying my last 2 homes and who regularly checks property values, let me say I like zillow. While zillow is often pricing property based upon limited available data (appraisal district) if the property isn't listed, zillow gives a pretty accurate range of prices and is very user friendly. Therefore realtors, complain all you want but the buyers are checking zillow and due to their smartphone app, zillow is perhaps the most convenient. Learn to deal with zillow and/or explain the pricing difference to the buyer. Remember, your commission needs to be earned by knowing and researching price and compatible pricing sources.

Judy,

I have had a great deal of problems with Zillow. One is a security issue they pay no attention to. It also is life threating. I cannot tell you why. I emailed a customer rep about it. She said it would be taken care of. It was not. Today, I posted two questions and told them about how dissatisfied I was. I then saw they immediately placed my zestimate down $2000. This was done intentionally. This is the second time this has happened when I asked them to remove something from my ownership listing that I posted. When I try to go on my listing it says see a realtor to make changes. I want to try and file a class action lawsuit. I understand this takes work and is difficult to do, however there are thousands out there who feel like I do. You cannot even talk to anyone in person with Zillow. Not even a customer rep. The phone number they list steers you to no where. I think they have their programming set up inorder for them to be able to do anything they want at their end with your listing. As a client you are helpless. I also believe they have people who work for them who pretend to be an interested buyer just to get more information from you about your home. This has happened to me through phone calls and emails. I think I may have something here now. I feel I have more proof than I need, especially since they took my zestimate down $2000 after telling them I was going to see an attorney. When I saw this happen before, I said it was just a matter of time when I would have enough evidence. They like to play with you. They are hurting us from selling our homes with wrong information for one.Then there is so much more! However this was the last straw when they took the zestimate down so quickly to get back at me.I will do all I can to bring this comapny down. All the realtors out there would be smart to stay away from zillow. I would never use or siggest a realtor who uses zillow.

Finally, others that have the same complaint I have. Zillow is a complete scam. I had my home professionally appraised and received a report for $68,000 more than what they were advertising on their site. I tried the professional route and emailed them requesting the metrics they use to calculate the home prices. They responded that it is all based on recent home sales, and not on actual visits to the home. When I looked at the homes they were using to compare mine with they were not even homes in the same category, they were comparing colonial homes with bi-levels. Also they dont even base there estimates on homes with the same number of bedrooms, bathrooms not even sq.ft. This site is a complete farce. My neighbors brought their home at the peak of the housing boom for $420,000, well we all know what happened. Well mid last year I noticed that her home dropped to $380,000 and it seemed normal, but a week after I noticed her home started increasing for no apparent reason. In 3 weeks her home increased almost $200,000 to 568,000 that's 140,000 over the peak. When I looked at my home it was still going down along with the rest of my neighbors. I emailed Zillow about this discrepancies and they pretty much sent me an email that blew me off saying they were to busy and would look into it when they had time, here we are almost a whole year later and her home is still 100,000 over the peak price so they haven't done anything. Today I see my home dropped another 27,000 go figure. I almost feel like I'm being punished for stating the obvious discrepancies that exist on this site. Now I don't believe in conspiracies but I feel like this is some wealthy groups plan to create sites like zillow for the sole purpose of destroying home prices so they can come in and buy them cheaply and sell them back to us for a higher price but that is my opinion. I that someone mentioned getting a class action suit against this website and I would like to know how I can be a part of it. Please let me know.

I agree with Mike. Zillow CAN and DOES punish owners that piss them off. They do drop the price, a huge amount, over night and can lock out the owner from their very own listing! Also, There are BIG realtors who know how to make other listings very low. They can do this by getting on Zillow ahead of time posing as the owner and doing a low ball OWNER ESTIMATE. (Owner calls multi realtors for comparisons.). I even had one leading Nationwide realtor known for flipping property post an LOWBALL estimate on the internet under his Nationwide ReMax name prior to even coming to my house for an estimate. So if you list a 3B/3B/2CG it will be listed with 2B/1B/1CG comparison homes, lowering the Zestimate big time. They drive the market down and buy/flip the home!! Or sell their listing quick (with a super high Zestimate) since yours looks like a bad buy. Cut Throat business. Don't think they don't have inside people who get kickbacks too, cause they can. Some States do NOT allow Zillow to post MLS. ZIllow is NOT a licensed realtor and has NO right to post so called estimates!Yes, I believe CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT is the way to go! Also, I had my Large Leading Realtor DELETE the ENTIRE listing off Zillow, since they refused to remove the Zestimate. Their sister company, removed their low ball estimate the very same day requested. OWNERS\REALTORS BAN TOGETHER, DELETE Listings off Zillow!! Maybe Zillow will get the message, no homes, no website activity.

Zillow/Trulia/Hotpads same owner. The companies are NOT LICENSED Realtors. They NEVER step foot in the homes that they put estimates on. At least Redfin has the integrity to say so on their website, maybe they have been sued, and had to post that disclaimer.On one of Zillow's website they even stated that they purposely have extreme high and low Zestimate to start controversy and get FREE publicity by people talking about it. Serial Killer mentality? Even THEIR so call VIEWS and saves are probably pure fabication. I seen homes with supposedly over 2k views in 3 weeks with hundreds of save, due to a very high Zestimate vs. the listing price, yet the home IS still on the market for sale. Probably an app you can buy to generate BS. Thus, even a high Zestimate does not nessarily sell a home. But maybe it does make the foolish buyer feel better about his purchase. Buyer beware! ONLY DEAL with KNOWN LICENSED Realtors/Agents.