What’s wrong with Zillow?
It’s a computer-generated system. I don’t know exactly how it works – actually, it doesn’t. I know one thing: It makes my job a lot more difficult.
How do I explain to a home seller – it’s the sellers who love Zestimates – why their house is not worth the $903,500 that Zillow says? It’s always a viscious fight-to-the-death arm wrestle.
BTW, a few weeks ago the Zestimate for the 502 Parkside, San Mateo house was $947,000. Both of these Zesimates were displayed after the house sold for $860,000.
Seller vs Agent
When the house first went up for sale, it was listed for $938,800. A few weeks later: 898,000. What was going on? The seller and his Realtor were negotiating over the price.
The number one thing you can’t do in this market – really, any market – is overprice.
The Real Home Value
When a buyer is writing an offer, one of the first questions they ask is: What do you think about the price? It has very little to do with what I think. It has to do with what the market statistics prove out to be. With this particular house, the comparable properties showed its value to be about 850 to 860. The buyers liked the house, wanted to buy it and agreed to pay 860k.
The sale price of a home is equal to how much the seller will sell for and how much the buyer will pay.
In this market, buyers are looking for a deal. Pricing is, as always, the number one consideration when selling your property. Pick the wrong number and no deal – maybe ever. In fact, you’ll probably get less than you would if you had priced it accurately in the first place. There are a lot of reasons for that, but that’s for another post. I want to make one more point about Zillow.
Zillow Professional Directory
They recently rolled out their new Professional Directory. It’s terrible – or Ztupid as Kris Berg so correctly coined.
The Professional Directory is just as accurate (cough) as their Zestimates. So how do they stay in operation? $87 million – that’s how. Give me $87 million – heck, give me 1 million. I know what to do with it.
Got a San Mateo County real estate question? Call me at 650.888.9268 or send me an email Vicki [at] CallVicki.com. If you like what you’ve read, subscribe to the San Mateo Real Estate Blog feed.
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All the best,
Vicki Moore
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