ZillowReviews 586

According to Zillow, the value of my property was going up, up, up between 2011 and 2012, despite the fact that real estate prices overall in my neighborhood were fairly stagnant. In fact, they estimated that it had almost doubled in value. Based upon what?

But since 2011, my property has been going down, down, down, despite the fact that the real estate market in my neighborhood has gone up slightly in the past couple of years.

The comparison graphs for my neighborhood vs. my house show my neighborhood going up and down slightly, but my house went up sharply, nearly doubling in value, and then dropped precipitously to below the estimate in 2011. And this does not at all dove tail with what was happening in the local market.

Seeing what they have down with the estimates for my home, I can never take their estimates seriously again. Despite the fact that housing prices in my neighborhood have been gradually recovering, mine has been dropping by about 30K per month for the past year. I would love to know the calculus that goes into Zillow's apparent estimate nonsense.

CAVAET EMPTOR. As a consumer, I cannot recommend Zillow. I wrote a
Review on their website about a real estate "professional" who I had
Very negative interactions with - and zillow chose not to publish it without even telling me why. I came to the conclusion that Zillow really works for real estate pros and protects them because it is all one big real estate "brotherhood".
This "pro" has stellar reviews on Zillow (most likely written by
Himself) but every other website reviews show him just the opposite.
C'mon Zillow work fairly and honestly with both sides: realtors and
Consumers. It might go a long way towards cleaning up your own "C-"
Rating on the BBB site.

Also be very careful submitting reviews to Zillow - the following comes from Zillows rules and policies to realtors regarding on-line reviews:

QUOTE
"Will I know who has reviewed me?
When you receive an email notifying you of a review, you can see the username and profile of the person who has reviewed you, and, if provided, the address where the service was provided and the approximate sale price, if a home was bought and sold, as well as the year the transaction took place."

I am a realtor in Kansas and I spent TOO much money on Zillow. Like many others... I got nothing but bad leads. Total waste of money! To top it all off... I sent them a cancellation notice at the end of the month before the next billing cycle started and they not only charged me a cancellation for the following months... they also charged me the full ad rate for the next month which was scheduled to start in the next couple days. These people don't operate with morals or ethics so beware. They produce fake leads in addition to bad leads. I'm sure they produce some good leads too... I just wasn't fortunate enough to receive any of them.

After writing a review on this site about Zillow last year, I have read many reviews that agree with my consensus. This company is totally irresponsible in it's business practices, answers to no one, and has hurt many people who try to sell their homes for fair prices. I agree with the person who suggested a class action suite against them. No one should have to deal with a company like this pretending they know your house, and it's worth. Just like the bogus credit score system, zillow is not reliable, and costs people a lot of lost money.

Recent numbers are changing massively, sometimes weekly, with no basis in fact.
For example, a house across the street from me, two doors down, just dropped from $590k to $520k over the past week with the entire past history price chart revised as if the high valuation (which was consistent over many months prior) had never existed.

The strangest and most clearly defective part is that this house sold last month, just closed and the new owner moved in over the past weekend. The sale price was $588k. How could it suddenly be worth almost $70,000 less? It can't. Zillow is calculating on defective formulas, using bad data and is unreliable and dishonest in reporting past valuation and valuation trends.

They have dropped the price zestimate on my house by $100,000 in the last 7 months. So it is now only two grand over what I paid for it, 10 years ago... Even though my neighborhood has exploded the last few years, new development all around me, literally. You can't even get a "lot" in my neighborhood, for more than 60grand of their zestimate. And my next door neighbors house, who has exactly the same house, is listed as having 2 more bedrooms and 2.5 more bathrooms? I had contacted them about multiple listings of my property and to remove interior photos from 4yrs ago. They sent me some bs form letter about their algorithms. The worst!

I looked up our home information on Zillow, and the home info is wrong, the house is undervalued by about 125k. We live in a subdivision in a rural area, so many of the homes are a little cheaper, but we built a custom home, with granite counter tops, ceilings, walk out basement, cherry cabinets, etc., and they have valued our home at 258k, The cost per scare footage to build is more than that. Whoever does these Zestimates, needs to have some common sense.