Are there any merit to the home values as given on these sites. In the event there aren’t similar home sales in the neighborhood is this a tool that can be used to approximate ARV.
No those sites are not to be used to evaluate true ARV. Your best bet is to get really chummy with an investor friendly real estate agent to pull recent sold comps for you.
I don’t make final buying decisions based on them, but I run numbers on probable 30-40 homes everyday, and I use there numbers for that initial screening to see if its worth looking into farther
I recently purchased something and the zillow app for iphone shows the correct property and the sold price within 1,000 of what i actually paid. So the “recently sold” feature may be of some use, and reasonably accurate.
Zillow works different in different areas.
I love using it for initial screening, but 60 miles away in another town, it doesn’t give Zestimates.
The recently sold thing doesn’t always work correctly in my area if the house wan’t on the MLS.
I like how I can really quickly compare neighborhoods.
The numbers might not be spot on, but if one neighborhood has all 30K estimates, and a mile away has all 60K estimates, that’s helpful. Especially since I’m relatively new to the town I live in.
I am in Houston and I use Lifestyles Quest. I don’t know if Quest works in Dallas.
yes, Quest has the Dallas MLS,the only thing I don’t like about Quest is it figure the “unrealized capital gains” totally wrong,it doesn’t take into account cash you put into the deal,so I end up using a spreadsheet from my hard money guy that I"ve modified to crunch the numbers
I agree with the group. Zillow can be used for rough estimates but obtain validation from other sources if you’re looking to make strategic decisions. Its accuracy can also vary by region. One quick way to determine how accurate it is for your area is by looking up homes where you already know the market value. Then you can easily determine how close to the mark they are.
The other piece of useful information is the tax appraisals section. It’s not present on all homes but when it’s there, it’s usually fairly accurate and saves the time tracking down each county’s unique and quirky tax appraisal website.
I never consider the Zestimate of a property. The first thing I do on Zillow is look at the For Sales in the area, then I look at the “comps” for a real comp or two. Then I go to the county property appraisers site for assessed value, and potentially some comps there as well.