Zillow

[segovia]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/for...sion=2007021511

http://www.zillow.com

[Pumapayam]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/for...sion=2007021511

http://www.zillow.com

Old news, someone discussed this last year. :closedeyes:

The search function is VERY useful . . . if you use it . . .try it sometimes.

Edited February 16, 2007 by Pumapayam

[jdbaker]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/for...sion=2007021511

http://www.zillow.com

Unfortunately, it's not at all useful for approximating value in Texas because Texas is among the handful of states that do not require sale prices to be disclosed. And while the MLS does require disclosure, there are a lot arms length transactions that do not go through the MLS for precisely that reason. For Houston, Zillow is no more reliable than HCAD.

[mpbro]

There is currently a bill in the state senate under consideration (SB270) that would require sales disclosures in TX. It's being opposed by the usual cast of characters. My favorite is an editorial in the Chronicle:

This bill is also potentially dangerous in this age of of terrorism and identity theft. Even the individual investors who make $1 million or less on a property sale can become targets.

When sales prices are reported, the information wouldn't become dusty trivia hidden away in the basement of a rural courthouse. The prices would be on the Internet, easily accessible from anywhere in the world. Texans would be exposed. Should the elderly widow have her real estate wealth advertised to crooks and con artists?

If we lift the veil on real estate sales prices, we would open the door to the criminal element to misuse this information. These instances may be rare, but even one tragic case is one victim too many.

Yes, that's right, the terrorists will exploit disclosed sales.

More to the point of zillow, they did obtain a TX broker's license to obtain access to MLS sales.

For my place (just south of Rice), zillow gives me absurd comps (one in the ghetto, one outside the beltway). The automatic models are powerful, but they have their limitations. I think something that relies on user interaction to make local corrections (one house is a dump, another has a terrible lot, another has a great lot and is unusually nice) is the way to go. Zillow doesn't currently build any local sense of community, and I think this will be its ultimate downfall.

[Houston19514]

Zillow is a decent starting point, but only a starting point. As has been mentioned by others, it does not take into account things that only a visual inspection can show, such as comparables being in a run-down neighborhood, the subject house having been extensively updated, etc.

There was an article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (I think it's only available to subscribers, so no link) titled "How Good Are Zillow's Estimates?"

The Journal analysed 1,000 recent home sales in seven states, comparing sales prices with pre-sale Zillow estimates. The median difference between the Zillow estimate and the sale price was only 7.8%. The estimates were about equally split between ones that were too high and those that were too low. Further, Zillow came within 5% of the price in 1/3 of the transactions. It was more than 25% off in 11% of the transactions. In 34 of the 1,000 transactions, Zillow was off by more than 50%. "Zillow tends to work best for midrange homes in areas where there are a lot of comparable houses... Even where there are numerous apparent comps, Zillow can stumble when vital information is missing. Data fed into computers, for instance, may not reflect the fact that a house has just been remodeled, destroyed by fire or put into foreclosure. Reported prices can be misleading, too. Sometimes homes are sold between family members for a token price, or sellers offer incentives to buyers, such as help with closing costs, that aren't reflected in the recorded price."

As to Texas, indeed "Texas does not provide public records showing housing transaction prices. To improve its performance in Texas, Zillow last month began tapping sales data from MLS."