What Is Zillowing?
A Zestimate: a tool for the evaluation of home values
The name for a home value estimate is a Zestimate, and the first thing to understand is how it is arrived at. Zestimates are based on a proprietary formula that incorporates public records and user-submitted data. A home value on the internet is not an appraisal and may not take into account all the data necessary to make it accurate.
Home appraisers must be licensed and certified. They are supposed to conduct an assessment of the home's value. They'll compare the house's features against a list.
They will look for visible defects, but they won't look for potential issues like a home inspector would. It is not true that Zillow claims to be 100% accurate. If all the homes within a six-block radius are similar, a Zillow estimate will be more accurate, because there are not enough specific variances to throw it off.
It won't be that close for older neighborhoods with many homes that have been improved in different ways. At least for now, it's not possible to predict how a buyer will feel when they walk in the door. It can't tell you whether the interior has been updated, whether the workmanship is superior, whether the materials used are inferior, or whether a school around the corner has decreased the value of homes that back up to the football field.
Real estate agents and appraisers use a number of factors when they are looking at a home. Csoftware programs can forecast the value of a home. Real estate agents use software, but they don't rely on it alone, like Zillow, which uses artificial intelligence to assemble its Zestimates.
The Value of a Single-Family Home
While home values have fallen across the country, the San Francisco region has pockets of strength where prices continue to rise, albeit modestly compared with the double-digit appreciation of recent years. The strongholds are all in affluent areas. The Bay Area values are down for the year.
Home values fell in the metropolitan area that includes Alameda,Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. That's a bigger drop than the nation as a whole, where homes are down 3 percent. Knowing that their home is worth less on paper is just an academic exercise for many people.
For anyone considering selling or withdrawing equity, a lower value means immediate effects. Sue McCullough, a computer programmer with Wells Fargo, was dismayed to see her home in Oakland's Laurel District was worth less than it was two years ago. The price estimates are not appraisals, according to the company.
A professional appraisal is required for any real estate transaction involving a mortgage. What is the name of the company? A 2-year-old website provides an automated home-valuation service for 67 million homes.
88 percent of all homes in the country are tracked by Zillow. How does it work? Zillow uses proprietary models to estimate home values after collecting data from a wide variety of sources, including county recorder and real estate listings.
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