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The Ultimate Zillow Poll

Published by Joseph Ferrara (2) August 15th, 2006 in Buyers, Poll, Residential Real Estate, Sellers and zillow. Comments

Update: Blogflux polls have been down periodically yesterday and today. This has caused some interruptions with the poll. Thank you for your patience.

We are curious to know how buyers and sellers view and use Zillow’s Zestimate. After all, Zillow was created for them.

In order to get the most feedback from consumers, please link this to a post on your blog so that your readers can participate and add to the voting results.

Let the voting begin!

Update: Questions based on a comment by Zillow.


I found this Blog Flux Poll via Rain City Guide. Thanks Dustin! Once the results are in, we will ask New York appraiser & master chartist Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel to make us a nifty graph.

Interesting tidbit: Creative Homeowner using Zillow’s Zestimate on Craigslist

“This home does need major renovations and is priced accordingly at $300,000 or best offer. I am willing to listen to any reasonable offer. Since there is no real estate company involved there will be no middleman. I am the owner and can do the deal right away. You can buy the house, fix it up and let your tenant pay the mortgage every month. This is a duplex/two family house. It’s not just a great investment, it’s a double great investment.

Zillow.com shows the home’s value at $435,973 as of 8/14/06. My bags are packed and I’m ready to move. Don’t be a day late and a dollar short, because this house will increase in value with just some TLC!”

Can you guess what’s missing from the above tidbit?

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  • Hi guys - I posted a link on the Altos Research blog. www.altosresearch.com/blog. The trackback failed so FYI.
  • mike - thanks. try it now.

    -rdb.sellsius°
  • This is a fascinating poll. It would be great to know how many responses you get -- but already the results are interesting.

    You've really captured some of the industry's insiders' more common paranoias about Zillow in this list. It's also interesting that you left out Zillow's stated goals - i.e. you don't ask: "do you think Zillow is a good starting point for determining a house's value?" - or - "are you likely to discuss your Zestimate with a Real Estate professional?".

    Your 7th and 8th questions are most interesting; Zillow does not plan to compete with (or replace) Realtors, yet that fear does persist, so I'm glad you've asked about it. Your poll address this paranoia directly - and already the results show that it's unfounded -- most of your readers do not view their Zestimate as an opportunity to bypass using a Realtor -- and the 13% that do, is representitive of the number of deals that are already closed "by owner".

    Hopefully this post will put some fears to rest - and get more professionals thinking about how they productively discuss Zestimates with their clients.

    Thanks You.
  • david - thank you for stopping by!

    we really want to hear what consumers think. hopefully, they will contribute their opinions in the poll by voting and in the comment section. but, there is no certainty that only consumers will answer this poll. hence, the results still may be skewed a bit. we're trying to spread the poll in non real estate circles so that everyday consumers can share their opinion. maybe you can help in this effort. please feel free to add the link to your blog. the more exposure the poll has the better. we will add your two questions to the poll for both buyers and sellers. as we believe, the answers from each group are relevant and telling.

    -rdb.sellsius°
  • Very interesting survey.

    The questions are great and capture what many industry leaders are currently debating and struggling with. Although not scientific enough to provide a conclusive result, I would love to know the final outcome is for each question and how many people participated in the survey.

    As author of the Swanepoel Real Estate Trends Report and someone who therefore tracks trends closely, Zillow has created a surprisingly big awareness in the real estate brokerage industry in a very short time. Time will tell whether their model has legs and can stand the test of time long enough to create lasting change.

    Great blog. Keep up the good work and thanks for your post on http://www.realblogging.com
  • Thank you Stephan. The results are interesting in that buyers and sellers seem to have the same lack of  overall trust of the zestimate standing alone but with some variances in other aspects. There also seems to be a geographical factor. The poll indicates that both buyers and sellers are not ready to abandon real estate agents because they can get a zestimate. Most would still consult an agent. Perhaps the "unzillowables" are a factor?

    PS We are attempting to spread the poll beyond the real estate blogs and if you can assist in that effort it would be most appreciated.
  • Lisa
    Zillow says my house is worth 534k, and I have it for sale for 449k and it has been forsale six months...you do the math. It seems to be WAAy off. MA real estate is dead.
  • Current local market conditions are unzillowables. Local market conditions include whether it's a buyers market or sellers as well as the number of similar homes currently on your local market & their list prices. You really are competing against them right now & not the past sales from a different market pool.

    Are you using a real estate agent? Have they evaluated your home to see what is keeping it from selling at your price? Is it being marketing to the widest audience of potential buyers. There are so many things that go into getting an acceptable offer, even if the house is priced to sell.

    The margin of competing errors between a zestimate and a professional doing a sensory evaluation of YOUR property in light of all data, including the zestimate, becomes even more critical in a flat or buyers' market.

    We wish you success soon.
  • Using other methods also, like checking current prices on other sites, I have used Zillow to determine a baseline price for our home should we decide to sell in the near future. The attributes of Zillow are that you can add in improvements that have been made and further fine tune your asking price. I would still use an agent for listing and sales purposes, but I have learned from experience that even if you are the seller they don't always work for YOU.
  • Poll looks great, and the results are interesting, but I think it is missing one question:

    Are you a:

    Real Estate Agent

    or

    Consumer

    That seems to me to be a key piece of information in order to interpret the results of the poll. Keep up the good work!
  • Great poll! Here in the Hamptons, zillow was typically short by 30-50% on their values, which translates into $MILLIONS$ for some homes. They have been particularly unreliable for waterfront and unique homes. Recently, it seems as though their values have been indiscriminately increased by about 30% across the market. Hmmmmmm, this makes me wonder if they have abandoned their "factual" approach and just started to "buy" confidence with higher numbers, the same thing that desparate real estate agents do when they want listings? md
  • Michael,
    Interesting point illustrating that local market conditions may lead to large variances. As you point out, these variances can translate into millions for unique and luxury homes.
  • Todd
    Zillow is useless here in Vermont because it has no data. I assume this is because all assessors records are kept at the Town level and the majority of Towns don't have the information readily accessible in digital format. Being a municipal employee (prospective buyer also), the only records I would look at in trying to determine the value of a house are the assessor's records. I see Zillow as more of a novelty then as a useful tool.
  • p todd
    Are taxes and assessed property value figured in on zestimates?

    Some counties have 3% caps on taxes and thus assessed property values are much lower on homes that have not been sold for more than 30 years and wouldn't this affect the zestimate?

    Also, I find that the recent sales are lagging behind in being posted.
  • Excellent questions and points, p todd.

    How zillow.com creates its zestimates has not been totally revealed, so we dont know how the mysterious creation comes about, or the range for that matter, but certainly "assessed value" is part of the formula.

    So, for those counties that have caps (or dont reassess every year), as you astutely point out, the ability for zillow to use this data to create relevant useful values is suspect, especially if there is no recent sales data to work up those values. That's a BIG problem. You get it. Many others do not.

    You are absolutely right about the sales price lag. Zillow cannot get the data until it is put into the database, which can be months. If you read carefully, zillow says something to the effect, "we publish the data within days" Yes, days after they get it, not days after the sale.
  • Roger Mathew
    Zillow sucks! it showed my house value drop 100,000 in one month. there are no homes for sale in my area yet zillow dropped the price. Unless there was a major crime wave that I missed I can't see any area dropping like this. This is very nice area in Chicago called Lincoln Park.
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