Have you zillowed?

Zillow.com took another beating in the press today. Our readers of course, know all about zillow.com from out article of February 10, 2006 (What’s wrong with zillow.com). In that brilliantly biased review of zillow, we analyzed its inner workings and tested it against properties we have strong information on.  See that article here.

In today’s Los Angeles Times article (Real Estate Section) it doesn’t offer much favor to zillow and actually implies (by stating outright) that “zestimates” of user’s home values ‘izn’t’ [sic] worth the time it takes to type in the address.

Zillow says that their estimates are within 10% of the selling price. Really!?!?
10% of 1,000,000 is (1,000,000 x .10) 100,000. Which means (you know its coming) that someone is either underpaying or overpaying by a hundred thousand dollars on a home whose information is posted on zillow.com! That’s a huge margin and it doesn’t sound like a transaction I’d like to be anywhere near.

Hope Edelman doesn’t like the fact that zillow enables people to look up financial information about her which they may use to determine how much she could bare if a person were to sue her. I agree with her concern too. I don’t like the idea of people assuming that I can afford to settle some dumb lawsuit because of information they’ve found on zillow. I think her concern was that this information may invite a frivolous lawsuit, and again, I don’t like it either. To Hope, I’d say, get over it though. Attorney’s have been doing this forever and probably always will. This information was never hidden or secret, and, any lawyer worth his or her salt, would have a body at the county recorder’s office on a regular basis checking out this kind of information upon which they might determine a settlement amount or total damages to sue for.

Enough about zillow already! Back to the Long Beach real estate market. From recent closings, you may expect to find purchase prices at or near 530,000 for 2 bedroom, 1(+) baths under 1500 square feet living space. 3/2 houses +/- 580,000 and 2 bedroom condos in the high 200,000 to middle 300,000 range.

For an accurate estimate of your homes value please call upon a professional, Give Dixie a call at (562) 531-7000 x. 190 for a no obligation, no sales pressure presentation. Oh, and its free! Send E-mail