Zillow.com versus the truth: Why it matters . . .
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Tuesday, August 15th, 2006, 10:50 pm MST
Category: Blogging, Disintermediation, Marketing, Real Estate, Zillow.com
This was in a comment, but I’m pulling it out because I think it’s important:
A Zestimate cannot be “off” or “on”. It cannot be accurate or inaccurate. What is being evaluated is not a house but statistics and documents about that house. As I have demonstrated, the Zestimated house may not even be there. The results can have a greater or lesser correspondence to reality — which attribute is equally true of astrology — but a Zestimate is not a statement about reality. This issue is not whether or not the Zestimate is more or less correspondent to reality. The issue is whether it is wise to substitute calculations based upon statistics and documents about a house for an actual, objective, on-site evaluation of that house. This is a determination an informed party — such as a mortgage lender — can make at his own peril. To induce ordinary haphazardly-informed consumers to do so strikes me as being fraudulent.
Why does it matter? From another comment:
Here are some good ol’ boys in Texas who are using Zillow.com to milk the rubes. They’re responsible for their own behavior, of course, but who made it possible?
The fact is, this scheme is only possible because Zillow.com has represented itself as an authoritative source when the principals of the company know that is untrue. The people running this game can gull the public because the public comes to them having been pre-gulled by Zillow.com.
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Related posts:4 Comments so far
[...] The ever-erudite, passionate, and insightful Greg Swann has some hard-hitting commentary on both these points. [...]
[...] To induce ordinary haphazardly-informed consumers to do so strikes me as fraudulent. [...]
[...] The best thing about Zillow is their marketing. From a product perspective I don’t think they have much to offer and I’m not alone. The Zestimate (zillow-estimate of your home’s value) is widely recognized to be so inaccurate that it offers little value to users. In Georgia, for at least the houses that I’ve checked, there aren’t even Zestimates. All that is offered is the tax assessor’s valuation and for anyone who knows anything about Fulton County, you know not to put much weight on that number. [...]
[...] in a declining market the Zestimate can be far higher than the actual market value of the home. I foresaw this abuse two years ago, but by now it is epidemic. Zillow is ripe with disclaimers now, where it was not in August of [...]