Inacccuracies from Listing Websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Home Sites

I often get calls from property owners demanding that I change the information that is posted on Zillow. "My home is worth WAY more than that!" I have had property owners call who have their property listed for sale when in fact it is not. "Take that off there!" they say to me. I have to patiently explain that I just advertise on the that website, and I do not write the content. I can tell they do not believe me.

There was an article posted to day in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "In the old days, if you were looking for a new place to live, you picked up the local newspaper, looked at the real estate classifieds, put on comfortable shoes or gassed up the car, and began a house-to-house search.The Internet has made the job easier, at least on your feet. In short order, you can look at all kinds of sales and rental listings just about anywhere – around the block or across the country. "
But the important question is how reliable are websites such as Zillow, Trulia, HomeGain, and a growing number of others?

Ken Shuman, head of communications at Trulia, says that his website obtained information on 95 million houses from county assessors’ offices nationwide and Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, a data provider. Details about Zillow’s 100-million-plus homes, both for rent and for sale comes in from public-record data, real estate brokerages, users of our information (consumers), and real estate agents directly.
As a Real Estate Broker, I , and many other Real Estate agents take issue with these website flaws, as well as with the values the sites place on houses, for sale or not.
When asked whether I recommended these sites to consumers, I say, "Not a reliable source."

I think they can play a helpful part when someone is just beginning their search as a Buyer, but it is not so for a Seller looking to compare numbers. Estimates of value offered on some websites, such as Zillow’s “Zestimates,” are unreliable, using the formula that determine them “is akin to throwing arrows at a dartboard. You rarely know where it is going to land.”

There is sometimes a 90-day delay in obtaining data, said the three-month “rolling average” the Trulia site offers is based on properties within municipalities rather than within metropolitan statistical areas.When people buy houses, they are looking for specific places – a city, town, or neighborhood. “MSAs can skew numbers. There are often dramatic differences from neighborhood to neighborhood.”Trulia lets consumers “leverage” information about houses. “People often save homes from the site if they are not interested in buying them. If they are following a property, we serve them up recent comps (comparable sales) so they can manually update that information.”

HomeGain has an “instant home-prices tool” that allows an owner to recalculate a price range that might be better if actual amenities and square footage of living space were addressed. It doesn’t affect the information from official sources.
Regarding the accuracy of location and school information, Trulia, Zillow, and HomeGain all said owners could update details posted about their homes.“If you feel your house is misrepresented on Trulia, you can update the information as long as the house is off-market,” Shuman said. “We hope to get edited information for houses on the market, but right now we are trying not to tussle with listing agents.”Zillow requires people trying to update descriptions to prove that they are the homeowners. It’s tough to pinpoint all but obvious misrepresentations, but the company says “we do filter for owners giving erroneous information about home or area, and eliminate the data from the models.”The issue, for some, seems to be not so much the information the websites offer but what consumers might take away from it.“When you want to get an idea of what your home is worth for a refinance, those sites can tell you the wrong value,” a local mortgage broker says, “If the appraisal comes in lower, it may mean a higher interest rate than you were expecting.”Zillow’s Jill Simmons said, “Zestimates are an estimate – a starting point in determining a home’s value,” not the actual value of a property.
The data on Zillow “are tools to help consumers make better real estate decisions,” Simmons said, “but we always recommend that people who want to buy, sell, or refinance engage a local professional like an appraiser or a real estate agent.

Here at GULF ACCESS REALTY we are always ready to give you accurate information! Call today!