The Weekly Poll: How accurate is the Zillow estimate for your home?

The weekly poll is trying to get an idea of how much its home is worth. Go vote and tell it to call a real estate agent.
This week’s poll topic is an interesting one that was suggested by @RussM over on Twitter: How far off the mark is the “zestimate” for your home on Zillow.com? For those of you not familiar with the online real estate behemoth, Zillow is a real estate web site that made a name for itself by offering to give you a “Zestimate” of your home: that is, a rough estimate of your home’s current value based, mostly, on recent neighborhood sales. And while Zillow’s estimate is a good starting place for determining value – and there’s definitely something intriguing about simply typing in your home address and having that “magical” number pop up – most folks (especially agents in the know) have found that their personal estimate didn’t quite hit the mark. I looked up my personal home, and knowing the market pretty darn well in my own ‘hood, I’d say their estimate is about 5% low. One reason for that is that I take updates and improvements like kitchen remodeling or a new roof or HVAC into account that Zillow simply can’t. Also, if you have an older home that has been added on to, Zillow may have older information regarding your square footage or number of bedrooms and baths that can greatly affect their estimate.
So, if you’re a homeowner and haven’t gotten your “Zestimate” yet, head over to Zillow and do so and then come back here to answer the question. Do you think your estimate was high or low? Or maybe it was magically just right? Cast your vote and let me know!
Finding out the value of your home by not be as easy as the click of a button, but getting the latest information on the Knoxville real estate market is. Just have it delivered straight to your feed reader or inbox by subscribing to All Around KTown today!





Hard working Knoxville real estate agent by day. Intrepid Knoxville real estate blogger by night.