I coined the term unzillowable in this post on August 13, 2006 and described it the next day in this post. The first real estate listing to use the word was by Jay Thompson in Arizona.
Unzillowable, adjective (un zil’ o bull): unable to be valued by the popular website zillow.com.
“This state-of-the-art mansion in Texas, designed by Eero Saarinen & once owned by George W. Bush, is unzillowable”; noun: something which cannot be valued in a Zestimate. “Privacy is an unzillowable.”
A home or any type of Real Estate is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
We have followed the Zillow talk since before its launch. In fact, we briefly spoke with Rich Barton at Inman’s NYC Connect Conference back in January. He revealed to us that Zillow would only focus on residential sales, not rentals.
Zillow appeals to the consumer’s desire to get value instantly, even a “ballpark” figure. Like Property Shark before it, Zillow taps into the public databases to provide past sales data. If it stopped at that, it might have less backlash from brokers, agents and appraisers. But it takes it a step further and through some unknown number crunching produces a “Zestimate”. Granted, it is only an estimate. Fine. But the zestimate is subject to gross inaccuracy. It is free, but you can’t take it to the bank to get a loan.
We believe the reason a zestimate is subject to inaccuracy, sometimes major, are those unique characteristics of a home & certain environmental or other factors that set one house apart from its neighbor. This may also be a reason why it is free.
You can call these:
• Intangibles
• Emotional factors
• Curb appeal
• Inside information
• Unique features
These are things that lead one person to pay a different price for one house than the one right next door. We choose to call these “unzillowable” features or just “unzillowables”. Zillow is conscious of the unzillowables and is working to incorporate them to improve the site. We support consumer access to information if it helps sell real estate but we also believe users should be fully informed of the limitations of any valuation technology in measuring a home’s personality.
Here is our list of unzillowables.
• Traffic noise
• Privacy
• Neighbors - Best or Worst? - Do they party a lot? Are they loud or obnoxious? Are they kind, quiet and considerate?
• Neighbor’s property - Do they have junk everywhere? Do they never maintain their landscaping, property or their house? Are they meticulous?
• Neighbor’s pets - Barking dogs? Exotic animals?
• Unique Day & Night Features - Street lights & signs shining through the bedroom windows at night. Daytime construction.
• Water Issues - Basement floods only when it’s a real heavy rain.
• Cul de sac - Positive & negative features. More privacy but lacks alternative emergency access routes. Dead end street.
• Stigmatized home
• Exposure
• Views
• Offbeat homes
• Wallpaper
• Paint color
• Land Pitch - Bad slope where you have to cut alot of grass. Water Drainage.
• Smell - Good & Bad. Pet smells. Orange grove. Farm & Crops.
• “est” Homes - The nicest/ugliest home in the neighborhood.
• Homes in non-disclosure states
• Future events - [Building, Community, Neighborhood, Town, City, State] New laws, zoning changes, re-routed roadways, long term construction (see Second Avenue Subway construction project in NYC)
Updates:
• Bugs - mosquitoes, mice, rats, ants, termites, pigeons, etc…
• Micro Climate– leeward, windward, etc
Room flow
Decorating scheme
Landscaping
Local market condition–buyers’/ sellers’, mortgage rates
Current market pool–priced inventory a home is competing against
Provenance—historical, architectural, celebrity.
Sex Offender Proximity
Smokers in units sharing common walls (via Teresa Boardman)
What would you call unzillowable?
Related Post (the gold is in the comments): Mining the Elusive Unzillowable.
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Wonder how long it will take David from *Z* to pop in.
In today’s real estate market - interior condition is unzillowable. Many homes in the “distressed” state have many negatives which prospect buyers might want.
Another unzillowable is the historical pricing within a neighborhood versus another neighborhood.
And the concept still holds true today.
Joe, around the time of this post I think Zillow backed away from proclaiming that they were the “Kelly’s Blue book” of home valuations.
It seems they have deemphasized the Zestimate and are promoting “dueling digs” and their mortgage product instead
Hi Chris
Good taste is something that Zillow can’t estimate. A house that is done “right” is easily worth $100k more than the same floor plan down the street. The system is subject to gross error.
Nice post! Doesn’t surprise me that Jay coined the term “Unzillowable”, he’s pretty witty!
I think that many readers (especially homebuyers) can learn a great deal about certain aspects of a home that you may not discover until after you’ve already moved in (perhaps even months after moving in).. such as noise, neighbors, smells, etc.
RicK– Jay was the first to use the term unzillowable in a listing. And yes, he is a clever fellow.
Denver Home,
Absolutely. And shall ever be.
Louis
It was because of unzillowables (Zillow called them oohs and aahs– they could also be oohs and icks) that Zillow finally allowed homeowners to adjust the data. Strangely, they did not initially allow the new zestimate to be viewable by buyers, Zillow’s core market.
Interestingly, the Kelley Blue Book analogy was quickly abandoned as a big time marketing gaffe– homes are, overwhelmingly, not depreciating commodities. (They did however keep the silly stock graphs.) I would like to know who came up with the KBB analogy.
Zillow deemphasized zestimates because they cannot sustain a website on them. The sooner they toss them altogether, the better for them.
2 corrections:
1) “unzillowables” are unrelated to owner edited home facts. By definition, owner’s facts are “zillowable” if those updates are estimated to have a measurable impact on the home’s value.
2) While we obviously hate to get repetitive, this claim that the KBB analogy was “abandoned” is silly. That’s just not the case. Obviously in making that analogy we did not suggest that cars were somehow the same as houses. The analogy obviously is that both websites attempt to estimate market value and that still holds true today.
David,
1. Not so. How does an owner input “traffic noise” or “odor from the pig farm down the block” or the rotten neighbor next door?
Go down the list of unzillowables and tell me which ones can be input by owners to change the zestimate?
2. Why then do I not see any references to KBB anymore?
Can you send me some recent links where Zillow likens itself to KBB as you describe?