Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com and the bazillion of other third party real estate sites are useful for many things. I love the fact that these sites help consumers tour homes without leaving their home. I believe they provide helpful information to consumers who forever, before the internet, were blocked by REALTORS from seeing critical information. There dozens of things anyone can do without a real estate licence to participate in the sale of homes. One of the essential functions of the process of selling, pricing, is regulated by license law. The third party web services have managed to gain consumer trust while avoiding license law accountability. Zillow and their Zestimate may be the one you are most familiar with.
By their own admisstion, Zillow is off by up to 20% about 98% of the time. That’s a crummy rate. I’m not able to tell you what anyone will pay for your home, but I can show you where you are safe in accepting an offer where an appraiser can support the value, and where we will have some risk. If I was off by up to 20% 98% of the time, we’d have big trouble.
Read the large print.
Third party web sites are great places to start when homeowners or buyers begin to consider prices. Just know this, even Zillow knows they are way off base and they’re telling you they know they’re most likely wrong.