Do you look up the value of people's houses on Zillow?

[Anonymous]

Always. But I also look up information about them as well. House values are only a small part of the picture in terms of wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Zillow will tell you how much they owe on the mortgage too. Only time I’ve been impressed was when I looked up an acquaintance and they bought the house for cash. I never would’ve known. Very under the radar.

I had no idea. But just looked it up and:
House #1: accurate
House #2: VERY wrong

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the time.

I've looked up the ownership data of pretty much every house in my neighborhood too. How much they paid, who is actually the owner, if it's in a trust, etc, is very interesting to me. I'm super nosy.

How do you do this? Do you have to go to the courthouse?

No, it's just public information on your county's tax assessor's page. I'm not the same PP who said "Yes and I practically have the Fairfax co tax assessor website bookmarked," but yup, that's me too (just not Fairfax county).

The simple ownership info is usually on the gis map for your county too.

NP. But why do you do this? Why is this important to you?

Because I'm a curious, nosy person. It's not important to me, it's interesting.

[Anonymous]

Wow. I just spent 30 minutes looking up all my neighbors. What surprises me is how little many people put down. 10% is normal, but some were much lower. I wish I had the confidence they did. And, no, they are not underwater by any stretch of the imagination. It got them into a house in a good area with good schools and flash forward 5-10 years they are laughing all the way to the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I look it up to see what they paid (incl. mortgage info which as folks have said is sometimes wrong but also often right) to get a relative sense of their housing cost.

Most of the time, it just validates I am not being crazy and they clearly have family money. It's not always that it's fully paid off, its just a huge down payment combined still with a huge monthly payment that implies they either have financial security from somewhere else (like an inheritance) or that they are living paycheck to paycheck to sustain their lifestyle.

I just looked up my 2 houses and the mortgage info is wrong on both. Our primary home has been paid off for some time, yet it shows we still have a small mortgage. Our second home has a pretty inflated value, by maybe $750k over market, and shows that we have a $650k mortgage when the actual remaining mortgage is $150k.

But yes, I do look up zillow estimates for other people. Never look at the mortgage info since I assume that isn't accurate.

It only records when you take out the mortgage and then it amortizes it over 30 years or whatever the term is. if you bought with 20% down and then paid monthly on schedule it would be right. If you paid extra or paid if off early, it would not be right.

homes.com has the current balance down to the dollar for our house.

This answered so many questions about our friends. Like one whose mortgage is literally held through the Bank of Dad.