The above was for Austin and whether or not a zestimate appears for an active property seems random.
Now I would like to sell my property in Reno, NV without an agent and I am not sure what will happen to the zestimate. Perhaps I am overvaluing the importance of Zillow's estimate. There are other stories that Zillow will immediately knock down the estimate of a For Sale By Owner home and then call the seller with an offer that is slightly above their lowball estimate. But that level of manipulation seems hard to believe.
I'm guessing so.
Zestimates are just so wildly off...like +/- 20%. (Hey maybe that's why, IDK.)
I bought my first house in Salt Lake City in 2014 and every house in the area was supposedly priced "above Zestimate". The market was provably different than Zillow's claims.
I just learned to ignore it altogether. Houses aren't cars; there's no usable Blue Book.
I repeatedly hear these ad hoc solutions to the egregious rise in housing costs. They’re just silly whack a mole bandaids. Address the supply issue in a supply and demand based market, and you don’t need all this other nonsense complaining about foreign buyers, Zillow, Blackrock, Californians, or whatever else.
2) Zillow does more than just make a market, they’re also supposed to be facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers. The fact that they’re also a party to these same transactions is an obvious conflict of interest.
I think it's pretty well established in economics that market making improves liquidity. As a parallel, in the used car market, having used car salesmen allows people to quickly liquidate a car to cash without needing to go through the work of finding buyers. Similar on the sell side.
And the housing market is one very sorely needing liquidity, as even the quickest closing times take 30 days, at the cost of a 5-7% spread amounting to an average of $25,000 wasted on middlemen.
I don't understand how commission based realtors exist nowadays. They primarily provided value in the past by being the sole network between sellers/buyers. That monopoly doesn't exist anymore, so it doesn't make sense for them to demand a huge commission. I personally look forward to companies like Zillow disrupting this archaic system.
Also, the high prices for real estate make sense right now. Millennials are well past settling-down age in combination with a flight from inner cities that are becoming crime-ridden ratholes. (Just look up how many shootings occurred in Chicago this past weekend if you don't believe me.) I wouldn't be surprised if this guy had a "10 Reasons Real-Estate is a Terrible Investment" video a few years ago when prices were cheap.
How is this "control"? What makes it unfair? Maybe all those recently listed properties were undervalued compared to expensive construction.
