The Shockingly High Margin of Error With Zestimates

Charleston Real Estate Video Blog with Dave Friedman

How accurate are Zillow’s Zestimates? Zestimates are within 20% of a home’s sale price 80% of the time, which is a huge margin of error. For a $300,000 home, that margin of error could swing from $240,000 to $360,000. Zestimates are within 10% of the sale price just 70% of the time as well. In our $300,000 example home, the Zestimate could be off by $30,000 on the high or low side seven out of 10 times. “Zestimates are within 5% of a home’s actual value less than half the time.” Finally, Zillow’s Zestimates are within 5% of the sales price just 45% of the time. That’s still a $30,000 margin of error, and that’s as accurate as they get. As a professional real estate agent, I would have been out of the business a long time ago if I was off by 5% on home value estimates that often. That would mean I either overprice the home and it won’t sell, or I underprice it and leave thousands and thousands of dollars on the table! If you have any questions about how to find your home’s actual value or about using Zillow, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’m always happy to help.