I was on the phone with a mitigator at Countrywide, discussing 2 of the listings I have that they are the lender on. I was trying to be sly and find out what the BPO had come in at (they wouldn't tell me, so I was trying to ask different hi/low questions to get a hint.) and get a guage on how acceptable the offers I had submitted were.
I was just about to give up when he said: "We use Zillow to value homes, how is your offer compared to Zillow?"
I couldn't control myself, Bad Andy had taken over and blurted out: "You've go to be kidding!"
oops, remove foot from mouth and try to regain control of the conversation...
I pulled zillow.com really quick and told him that Zillow was way off... it said the value was over $300,000, and I've had the houses on the market for almost 6 months, starting at 279, then 269, then 259, and then 239. Since day one I've been getting offers between 180-220.
$300,000 my butt!
This is the intelligence level of the people we're up against! If someone at Countrywide would sit down and compare 10, yes, just 10 of their recently sold REO properties to what Zillow SAID they were worth, they'd probably see that Zillow is nowhere close to reality.
Andy's Billion $ bank bailout:
According to RealtyTrac.com, in the month of February there were 290,631 foreclosure filings in the US.
If a lender rep pulled a Zillow on each of them, they spent over $363,000 in February alone...here's how:
290,631 X 5 minutes = 1,453,155 minutes spent on Zillow / 60 minutes = 24,219.25 hours.
Even if the average mitigator makes $10/hour, when you add in taxes and bene's it's about $15.
24,219.25 hours x $15/hour = $363,288.75 in wages to search the totally useless Zillow site.
and that's not even counting office space, desks, telephone lines, computers, internet access, etc!
Hey Countrywide, if you (or any other lenders) are reading this... What buyers are willing to pay in the open market is the value of the house! We just want to make your job easier and not have the buyer, seller, you, and I wasting a bunch of time! (by the way, we've had this FULL FILE in at countrywide since December 2nd! Still no answer!)
Thanks for listening to my rant.
Andy
p.s. Seriously, hit the little red flag by the "comments" section and flag this under "hilarity", I know it's not really funny, but "imbecility" was not a category to choose from!
p.p.s. To subscribe to my weekly e-zine, visit www.AndyTolbert.com
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