IS RELYING TOO MUCH ON ONLINE HOME EVALUATES GIVING YOU MISLEADING RESULTS?

IS RELYING TOO MUCH ON ONLINE HOME EVALUATES GIVING YOU MISLEADING RESULTS?

Most home buyers or sellers begin their first step of research by using online home evaluating websites like Zillow, Trulia etc.  These online estimates can be easy but might not always be accurate.  So before you decide to go ahead with the result of these online evaluation websites and put a price tag on your home STOP AND RETHINK.

Here are some reasons why you should stay away from these websites:

·         EXTREMELY SLOW UPDATE: Online websites like Zillow are slow in showing new listings. When a new property is listed it is updated on the local MLS in a couple of minutes whereas with these online evaluation websites it might take up to 9 days to show a new listing. So by the time an Investor sees the listing, reviews it and puts an offer the property might be already sold or have a couple of competitive offers already.

·         INACCURATE DATA: The real estate company Redfin was hired recently to assess the accuracy of sites like Trulia and Zillow and their study found that approximately 36% of the listings shown as active on Zillow and Trulia were no longer for sale in the local MLS, compared with almost 0% on local brokerage websites.  The study further found that brokerage sourced listings using their local MLS feed displayed 100% of the MLS homes listed for sale on their websites but Trulia only displayed 81% and Zillow 79%.  SO over 1/3rd of the listings you are seeing are NOT ACTUALLY FOR SALE and you only get to see 4/5^th of the listings that are actually for sale.

·         INACCUARTE HOUSE WORTH:  Zillow offers an opinion of a listed house value called a Zestimate and it is prominently displayed on each property’s listing page. Unfortunately the Zestimate values aren’t even close to the actual values that the properties sell for.  If you’re wondering how I can be so sure it’s because, to Zillow’s credit, they actually publicize the accuracy of their Zestimates city by city. To measure the accuracy of t

he Zestimate Zillow compares the actual home sale prices of homes with their Zestimate and they’ve found that the Zesimtate is within 5% of the actual sale price around 33% of the time and within 10% of the sale price around 50% of the time. 

Though these websites are a great source of information but they are not very reliable for accurate data. Hence when looking to purchase or put a price tag on your home when looking to sell your property go to a local real estate agent instead of going to these websites. Your local real estate agent will give you a more accurate and up to date information as compared to online evaluation websites like Zillow and Trulia. 

Editor: Neha Charan