Zillow is a new site that came up yesterday that is pretty damn amazing. Its a compilation of 62 million homes with estimated values called "Zestimates" that are fairly accurate!! They take into account all the factors that matter and give you prices for free with no bullshit or worries about being contacted, just type in address and your set!!

http://www.zillow.com/



Heres an article from todays NYTIMES,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/bu...icle_popular_2

 

Yeah it was up for about an hour and has been down ever since.

 

Still down. Keeps tanking when trying to search....

 

Finally got it. No values for us yet... must be too new. They have a satellite shot of our community though. Pretty cool... especially since it's old... so none of our neighbor's homes are even built yet (and neither is ours).

 

God damn I found out what our neighbors paid for their TH's. Simply put, I could have bought two for what I paid for 1.

 

According to them, my home and road do not exist yet....

 

They're way off. I'd say the sat shot of my area is about 2.5 to 3 years old....

Values seem to be off quite a bit as well..

 

It put the average house in my area at $215k. Meanwhile, you can't get into a house for below $450k now... and that's nothing. The community going up behind us will be starting at $550k... and another one down the road starts at $850k.... lol...

Close but no cigar....

 

I saw a thread about zillow and it disappear. What happened? Funny, that a coworker just minutes earlier had asked to check the site. What do you guys think of the data there? Is it reliable?

 

it was still up last night

 

As nicely as possible, let me just say that the data seems to be a bit out of date

 

Any alternatives?

 

Not that I know of. I usually don't look online for property values. I know what they are in the area by watching the local sales and seeing what the new communities are listing houses for (considering our house is only 10 months old, it gives us a good idea)... plus, I'm not worried until I sell, which is many years in the future

 

I don't know what stir the previous zillow thread created but I find the selling information useful. I can dig that info from my property tax assessor website but it is not all in one page like zillow has it.

 

YMMV... they didn't have values for some places in RI, but they did have the record of my purchase in 2001...

 

In my area they just pull the tax assessment.

 

From what I saw I'll just say that the data was fairly inaccurate. What was impressive that they had satellite shots of my community showing some of the houses. The Sat shot was about 2.5 years old or so, but still impressive. It's such a new community that most sites don't even recognize any street names in here!!

 

I looked at zillow last night, but didn't get a chance to play with it till today. I thought the values were pretty accurate for my area...

I bought my house for 179K in 2001, and it says it's worth 279K (exactly what I thought it should be at)... Down from about 300-320K, if I would have sold last summer...

It's kinda neat, but the 2 other house next to mine are valued at 291k. Same lot size, same design, same sq. ft., built in 1964-1965 by the same builder but haven't sold since the 60's (original owners still in both). So they must be using resent sale prices in their "Zestimates"... Since mine sold in 1965, 1979, and again in 2001 (to me), they have more price points...

I love this shit with the google map interface... back in the old days we had GIS (geographic information systems), but it was just layers of data. Assessor data, Census data, Water dept data, all on different layers (I worked as for a contractor who had the contract with a city). Nice to see that people are really pushing the publically available info to new limits...

 

Try this site:

http://www.bankofamerica.com/loansan...p=OMA&state=NC

 

i saw it on cnn.com yesterday but its been down ever since

 

wow, pretty cool, thanks! our recent upgrades put us over the top

 

For every house I inquire about, it's giving me the tax info for 2004 - pretty useless.

 

Ok, I just pulled a couple up that had more recent info. Looks reasonable.

 

Pretty damn accurate.

 

my parent's house just sold a few months ago
i think they sold it without even putting it on the market, just to the first person that looked at the house for almost 100k more than what that said.

i guess it's decently accurate, considering prices in that neighborhood have been skyrocketing in the past year. it's sad to realize the average price of homes in CA is twice that of the US as a whole. and the average price of homes in my parent's old neighborhood is twice that of the average price in CA.....

 

It may be that it has info for existing home, but they are way behind with new homes. As I said, the sat picture for our development looks to be over 2.5 years old. I'll try to put in my parents old address to see if that is closer

 

You're not the only one....

 

hmm, put in my parents old house, friends house, and my wife's parents house. Values seem very high.

They have my parents house at a tick under $470k. They sold it in April for $420k I think... so not bad.

They have my in-laws house at $464k. I'd be surprised if they could get $400k as it's a very small (and older) house on almost an acre, but only a small patch of like 20'x14' is usable... rest is rocks and their back yard is a mountain-ish landscape.

They have our friend's house listed at $584k. They currently have it on the market for $499k and had trouble selling it (in fact, they're moving today into their new place in FL and while still selling that house).

So it seems that they are over-estimating (or Zestimating)... at least in that area.

 

I also put in our old place... it's showing it wrong on the map (off by several streets in the development). When I find our actual street, it doesn't have any home values on any of the units. Which is good, b/c the estimate is $481k.... which would suck for the person who bought it from us if that were true considering they paid quite a bit more

 

it lists my dad's house at 3,934 sq ft, but only one story

They did get a couple of other things right, but don't know the bedrooms, still I wouldn't trust this thing.

 

It was on the dot for my neighborhood pricewise, but didnt have much other info. For my gf's parents house, it was about 300k below what houses in her 'hood are going for, but it did have the sq ft and room and pool notation.

I saw on Yahoo they don't have access to the MLS, so they have to go on tax assesments and "comparable home sales" whatever that means lol.

 

The house I just bought the end of last month is listed on there for $83K more than I paid.

 

Zillow seems to be over a lot for the St. Louis area. That is unless homes have appreciated a shit ton over the last 4 years.

My parents house is maybe worth $145k, Zillow says $166k
My ex-gf's house is worth $350k, Zillow says $460k.
My current house is worth $190k, Zillow says $215k.

 

Well, tax assesments and comparable home sales is how home values are determined.

The problem here seems to be that they're using really old tax assesments. And when they're overvaluing everything, they're looking at comparable home sales, but not necesserily for that neighborhood....

Example, my old zip, 10567. There are houses that sell within that zip for $400k and some that sell for $1.2m. So, if a smaller home is overvalued it's probably b/c there were a lot of recent sales closer to 1 mil then to $400k in that zip code even though those types of homes are in neighborhoods that are no where near eachother.

It's not bad for a rough estimate... but even for that I think it's off. Best bet is to just have a realtor come in... or a real appraisor.

 

Oh ok. I just said that for the specific case of my gf's neighborhood, they're all cookie cutters and sell for about 700-800k, not 400s like the site said. Aren't even recent tax assessements usually way lower than what a house could go for on the open market?

 

had our place valued at 5K less than what we paid 399K. Seems pretty accurate for our area in the Bay (CA). It showed homes that sold in the last 3 months as high as 427K so i know what to expect when I sell after I make improvements. Nice to be able to see the tax trends, other than that..meh. Like junior said, best to have an appraisor come in.

 

Billy G's house is priced right, but the pics aren't correct: http://www.zillow.com/search/Search....39&mode=search

 

The house here in AZ's zillow estimate is pretty much spot on. There was an appraisal done in dec 05 and it was right around the price zillwo quoted, 455k.