Today, I’m going to answer the question: “Can I trust the Zillow home price estimate?”
Zillow has become a favorite for home owners when trying to evaluate the price of their home. The online tool to get a quick estimated value of home values. With so many users, so many millions of homes, and having those homes spread across the entire United States, is it possible that the site could have inaccurate estimates? We’ll take a look at the 4 different types of home values and what they mean to you.
1. The first is the assessed value. This is the county's assessed value of your home and your land. they go off of this value when determining how much you pay in property taxes.
2. The second is the appraised value. An Appraised value is used by banks and lending institutions to determine how much money they will lend on a specific property. It could be for a new purchase or a re finance. Just because your house appraises at a certain amount doesn't mean you’ll be able to sell it for that price.
3. The third is online estimating tools like: The “Zestimate”, or just about any other FREE online home value estimate, have emerged as another tool. Zillow, and these other systems, are what is called an “automated valuation” that takes neighborhood statistics and tax data to determine the value of your home. And because they lack that actual sold data, it’s highly likely that using Zillow as your guide will cause you to either:
- Overprice your home and sit for months, or..
- Underprice your home and leave money on the table…yikes!
If you are looking for an accurate assessment of your home, I encourage you to get a free market analysis. Give us a call at (218) 260-7722 or email us at Lhansyer@live.com to answer any and all of your questions.