It’s the time of the season. No, not for love, but for taxes. Hence, this post for the property tax paying homeowner. You.
Zillow allows a homeowner to voluntarily correct or add data to their home listed on Zillow.com. This additional or corrected data may increase the value or zestimate of the home. I have opined in the past that increasing your home value or zestimate on Zillow may have unintended adverse consequences. From the Tax Man. This issue was also raised by Seattle PI.com, in this report by the highly respected John Cook (Venture Blog).
Zillow has kinda sidestepped admitting risk of a higher tax bill to homeowners who gussy-up their home details, saying “Hey, if that happens, you’re paying your fair share of taxes, Mack.” (I’m paraphrasing. David G doesn’t talk like that). My reply was in effect, “It ain’t my job to help the tax man raise my taxes.” I think I quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who basically said the same thing in many a tax case.
In any case, I still hold the opinion that the homeowner who supplements or corrects data on Zillow to increase their home value is at risk of a higher property tax bill because the tax assessor may be looking in on Zillow. And why shouldn’t the tax man use transparency for his purposes? Besides, if you’re adding the data, it might be true.
If the tax man does see that you, the owner, went to Zillow and changed 2 beds to 4, and 2,000 sq. ft to 3,000 , yada yada yada , he may decide your property taxes need to be raised. And what defense will you have when he says: “Hey Mr. Homeowner, don’t complain to us. You’re the one who input the data to raise your property value, not us.” I guess you’ll say: “Damn that Zillow”. (wait, that’s what I would say.)
Now, on this point, I want to share this recent comment from Marlow Harris, an experienced Realtor (and blogger) in the Seattle area:
One of my concerns is that the tax assessor will start using Z. to check property values. When asked it they’d use Zillow to assess property, our local tax assessor said they would use any information available to ascertain property values, and did not rule out the use of this data.
Interestingly, Zillow’s Rich Barton changed/corrected his home’s data (for his home improvements) to raise his zestimate. Why, you may ask.
Barton said:
I can see many reasons why homeowners would want to update the public record home facts that we have on Zillow with data that the homeowner knows to be current. However, my personal reason is that my house happens to be for sale right now. (quote source here)
I’m with Rich on this one. I’d wait until my house was up for sale before inputing updated and extra information on Zillow which might lead the tax assessor to send me a higher bill— let him send it to my buyer.
Happy taxes everyone.
Related Posts:
Mining the Elusive Unzillowable (if only for the comments. At the time, Zillow did not publish owner’s zestimates. To my comment that public data (fed to Z) may be inaccurate, incomplete or stale, David G said he had toured the tax assessor’s office and said the information was “double checked by many human beings” and …..there’s not much room for an error to make it the whole way through that system.” Yeah right.)
Did Zillow Actually Listen to Sellsius? Zillow admits its data may be screwed up and lets homeowners correct it. The tax man smileth.
Technorati Tags: Zillow, property taxes, zestimate, Seattle, Marlow Harris, John Cook, William o. Douglas, privacy
Think I had this conversation with David G on your blog more than a year ago. he wanted me to claim my propety and update it on Zillow but I won’t. They have data from the hopelessly erroneous Ramsey county Mn property tax records that has my home missing a substantial number of square feet. the home that was on our lot burned to the ground and our home was moved in. it is of historic significance and the move saved it from the wrecking ball. it is one of those unzillowable homes too. David accused me of not updating it becasue i was afraid I would have to pay my fair share of taxes. I do pay my fair share, but still contend that much of the data on Zillow is garbage. I recently had a seller ask me why I won’t advertise his home on it. i told him that anonymous people can answer questions about his home and comment on it and that Zillow has the information on it all screwed up. I won’t help spread misinformation about my listings. I think it is even against the law for me to do so.
Hi, it’s David G from planet FUD.
Please don’t put words in my mouth, Joe. I can obviously not talk for the tax assessor. That’s not sidestepping. What I do know is that updating your home’s facts on Zillow is no less of a risk of outing your tax-secrets than inviting guests to dinner or listing your home in the MLS.
Homeowners asked us to let them update their home’s facts and we did. They obviously asked because they understand that that information is published. i.e. this post is redundant but you probably knew that.
T -
“I won’t help spread misinformation about my listings.”
Of course. When you post your listing on Zillow it updates the home’s facts if the public record is incorrect. The home’s Zestimate accuracy will also improve if facts are corrected / added and of course your list price replaces the Zestimate as the most prominent value attached to the home on Zillow. No other online valuation site offers agents and owners this ability to update home facts.
I love it when people come up with an acronym like “FUD”.
Its intended to shut off the debate and give the person who is using the term some type of self appointed higher ground.
The typical FUD caller operates in these circumstances.
Someone takes a position and raises a legitimate concern contrary to the way they wish people to view things.
Then they cry FUD! By so doing we are supposed to dismiss the valid concern lest we be labeled FUD DUDDIES ourselves.
Zillow loves transparency. They want us to view it as 100% good.
If anyone points out why in some circumstances transparency is not good they will probably cry FUD!
If people are concerned about their privacy while Zillow cyberstalks them with ads-they will cry FUD!
If you raise concerns you’ll get an earful of FUD.
And if you are labled with FUD, you just don’t get, your point of view is invalid and no one should listen to you.
How is that for Web 2.0 two way transparent dialogue. Agree with me the way I say you should view things or you are a FUD.
Oh well I better go ad a few rooms to my house, there is a war on and we need to fund it. Hey look at the upside, Zillow will be serving up Lexus ads and luxury good ads instead of the Netflix ones I have been seeing to much of lately.
Or maybe, since I am in a FUDDY mood I’ll just go and disble my cookies so Zillow can’t track me..
Joe, How does that work?
David
I never said you spoke for the tax assessor– please re-read the post. (I quoted you verbatim & paraphrased where you did not expressly admit the risk of higher taxes)
Rather than FUDDING around, let’s get to the NITTY GRITTY:
Do you agree with the post message, which is, homeowners risk a higher tax bill if they update or add data to their home, which increases the home’s value? A simple yes or no will do. (I do not need a % comparison to dinner chatter or an MLS listing (owners can update on Zillow without the home being for sale.)
John Cook echoed this tax concern. Do you disagree with John as well.
“Homeowners asked us to let them update their home’s facts and we did. They obviously asked because they understand that that information is published”
But did they know & understand the unintended consequences, i.e. that the tax assessor could be looking in? that they could be setting themselves up for a higher tax?
Assuming your home was not for sale, would you update your home facts to increase your home value if Zillow had them wrong?
For your benefit Lou, I will write a post on how to disable your cookies so Zillow does not track you.
In the interests of consumer choice, I wonder if Zillow would object to that.
Thanks Joe, just to be 100% transparent, I already know how to do it.
But I think EVERYONE in the interest of total transparency should be taught how to do it.
Joe wouldn’t you and David be better off meeting at the coffee shop to discuss these issues?
Get a table in the middle of Starbucks where everyone can hear you so your conversation is transparent and have a few empty seats available for all those who want to join your conversation!
Funny, half of you left to work for Trulia, the other half turned sellsius into Homegain pocketbook, and the blog seems to get most traffic from Zillow bashing articles. C’mon Sellsius - can’t find anything good to write about Homegain?
Time to find a good real estate blog with no company affiliations. Any suggestions?
thanks for the help, very useful information from both the blog and the commentors.
FUD?
NY Assemblyman introduces bill to limit CyberStalking.
If passed consumers could opt out of having advertisers follow their browsing activities.
From the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/business/media/20adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
SouthernFLBoy
Thanks for your comment. I respect your opinion.
If you have read Sellsius over time, you will know that I have been standing up for homeowner rights & CHOICE on Zillow since Z was in beta diapers. I will continue to do so. (BTW, Rudy rarely wrote a Zillow post (though he did help with some Selltoons– check them out
http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/selltunes/
Also, look at the Zillow archives– they show I have been consistent over a long time. Not like some barking dogs who will roll over once they’re petted and given a biscuit. (Arf, she said.)
As for HomeGain, I, too, bought into the propaganda that lead generation companies are evil & lumped them in with the others. But when I was contacted by them to contribute to their blog, I had to investigate (damn the lawyer in me) to see if what they said was true. I’m not gonna write for some rip-off artist. I also saw that professionals I respected were HG users– my, that was a surprise.
And guess what? I found it was NOT true at all. Agents are free to use HG without signing any long term contract– they can get out at any time– and there are a number of tools to choose from (the operative word is choose). I also did a little undercover work (sorry HG) and found out that the folks there were extremely helpful, did not try to force feed me anything and did not harass me with calls, emails and all that other scary stuff I was thought to expect.
So, in the end I was able to judge HG a site agents should consider using, especially if they have difficulty getting traffic or leads, like an agent who is new to the business or has relocated to a new town–what’s he or she supposed to do?). And, HG just doesn’t sell them a tool and say thanks ma’am good luck– they show them how to use the tools. So, in the end, I think HG is about choice & Zillow is not (as far as homeowners are concerned).
Also, I tend to look at results and it seems to me that HG makes money and Zillow does not (I don’t know for sure if Z bleeds red because they never say– how opaque of them). My belief, and I can be wrong, is that a company makes money if they are satisfying the needs of their clients/customers. If Z ads made money for agents, they could not sell them fast enough and the price would rise and Z-men would be in Zillionaires.
In the end, I write about what irks me, what makes me smile, what I think may be useful to professionals and consumers. If none of it suits your taste I can only apologize that we all have different tastes and one ought go where one is happy to be.
Joseph - think you might have only hit the tip of an iceberg on this article. Depending upon the locale the seller might be facing possible permitting, penalties and fines for not obtaining the proper local permits for the modifications of their properties. In some cases these could exceed the annual real estate tax bill.
Another aspect worth noting is that the buyer may unknowningly purchase a property without the proper permits and inherit the responsibility of permitting costs, penalties and fines. Guess that gets back to the aspect of “let the buyer beware.”
Glenn
Now that is something I never considered, but you are absolutely right. A wise buyer, or their agent or attorney, should take any owner upgrades added on Zillow into consideration and ask the very questions you mention– did you get the permits (and let me see them). As you say, the buyer may inherit a big ticket item in making the upgrades legal and that will most certainly get you a higher property tax bill as well.
Thanks Glenn for stopping by. Come back. I like how your mind works.
Thanks for the compliment. You are correct the property tax bill will increase as a result of those improvements not permitted.
Will continue to stop by and comment when I have something to say, hopefully, it will as valuable as the above comment.
Just trying to figure out how to get the feeds for comments, so that I can follow and respond if appropriate.
If you get a chance drop by my blog, your constructive comments would be greatly appreciated.
Sure. You’re right around the cyber block, aren’t you Glenn?