So what does Zillow™ have that real estate agents like myself don't have other than than two founders from Expedia.com and a snappy company name with products like Zestimator™ and Make Me Move™? Well, let's see:
I just performed a value search on a property in Harvard and Zillow came up with a Zestimate™ value of between $403,886 - $551,977, or a range of almost $150,000. In fairness, it is probably just a formula utilizing public record sales data crunched with overall market data.
Just to be sure, I performed a second value search on a property in Shirley and the Zestimate™ value of between $295,482 - $386,400, or a range of just over $90,000. From my perspective a value estimate plus or minus 13-15% is not really all that helpful to consumers. Sure you can spend hours customizing your valuation with things you know about your house, but honestly these tools can never provide you with a truly accurate assessment of value that a trusted professional real estate agent can.
Zillow is great because you can see exactly what your neighbors paid for their houses or what their tax assessments are. However, when you are looking to determine a real value for your property your best bet is to work with a professional because assessments of value require experience.
Of course real estate professionals take into consideration the regular Zillow-type facts like recent sales and assessments, but they also go further to consider things like location, condition, age, quality of construction, road noise, useable land area, particular improvements, selling timeframe, current market trends, abutting property information, etc. A professional will consider all of the details with you and provide you with a much closer range and detailed market data to support that range. Like pricing artwork, you really want someone who knows the market and understands what you are selling. Zillow is a tool, but a trusted agent is the real asset.
