Zillow bugs

By
Commercial Real Estate Agent

Well for the last three years I had lived in a 1200 SF home, one of my real estate agent friends took a picture of my house and placed it in a Homes and Land Catalog hoping to drum up more calls due to the attractiveness of our neighborhood and home.  Well, immediately homes and land placed our home in Zillow, however when inputting the Square Footage they misplaced a few numbers and we were left with 115 SF.  Now my house value has plummeted on Zillow as well as a few of my neighbors, it has thrown off the "comps" as well and also created quite a few phone calls.

 

I am a commercial real estate agent and after inserting three listings about 3 months ago, I am unable to remove them.  I have placed them as sold, no longer for sale and every other conceivable status update and they cannot be removed, although I receive plenty of emails letting me know that I have been fired as the agent for these properties.

 

Please update your system and don't allow catalogs to automatically insert data over the top of homeowner data.  You are only ruining your own credibility.  I will also be emailing this to the folks at activerain that are from Zillow.

 

This is a copy of the post I left for Zillow after having several difficulties with their system.  Here is the response I received.

 

"We are sorry for your difficulty, we rely on several real estate magazines for our data and find them more reliable than homeowners data."

 

AMAZING!!!

Comments (4)

Kevin O'Shea
Coldwell Banker - White Plains, NY
White Plains, NY Real Estate

Hi Ryan,

That is really annoying, maybe you need to post another 2400 or 3000 sf house in the area to average it out. :)

All the best!

May 03, 2008 05:25 AM
Pam Pugmire
Silvercreek Realty Group - Meridian, ID
Meridian Idaho Real Estate
WOW, I haven't used Zillow and was considering it, but not so much now!  Thanks for the info.
May 03, 2008 05:28 AM
Tammy Anderson
"The Gateway Home Team" of RE/MAX Alliance - Collinsville, IL
Owens, Broker/Owner
I think they are horrible!  They had my home priced less than 50 percent what it's worth. 
May 03, 2008 05:56 AM
Bo Buchanan
Kettley Realtors - Oswego, IL
This is one of the problems with non-mls systems displaying real estate. Where is the accountability?  As Reatlors, we have rules, regulations and licensings to keep us accountable.  If something is wrong in the MLS - we can go in and change it.  If Zillow doesn't have some kind of escalation system in place to handle items like this - they need to. 
May 03, 2008 08:50 AM