Yikes. I just bought a house for 100K above the Zillow Zestimate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our house is listed on Zillow for the tax assessment, so it's "accurate" in that sense. It's about 60k below the minimum I'd sell for and what I think market is.

God NO. The tax assessments in our N.Arl neighborhood are about $200-300k below retail sale price. Additionally, some of the houses that were renovated after buying were not reassed at the new rate. There are some houses 3 times the size of ours that pay 1/3 of what we do in the tax assessment. Tell me I am not pissed about that! The Board is worthless and doesn't give a sh*t at appeal process.

Our tax assessment in Arlington is about $300K below our "Zestimate." Neither the County nor Zillow accounts at all for a whole house renovation that added two bedrooms and two full baths a few years ago. Both say we have a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house. Instead we have a 7 bedroom, 6 and 1/2 bath house. The houses that size in our block have a "zestimate" of $500K-$1M more than they give us. I have no intention of correcting Zillow's information because there is no upside to that. We aren't selling, and we've no need to call attention to our home. As for the County, well - all the work had the proper permits, and the County sent out an assessor to look around after the renovation was done. The County added maybe $100K to our assessment? Again, I see no upside in complaining that that's too low. But I must agree that something is off in Arlington's tax assessments.

[Anonymous]

zillow uses regression analysis based on key factors that drive a home price. sq ft, lot size, and of course comps. All available from public tax records. Their algorithm is not fed information about the interior of the home, the quality of construction, and all the zillion other factors that can affect a home price. As such, the z estimates are based on limited info. It can get close, but will never be precise without much more data (data that is hard to obtain) Take z estimates with a grain of salt.