Can you trust Zillow?
September 30, 2007
Ups and downs of the home-pricing Web site
Are you tempted to Zillow?
Fortune magazine says the Zillow Web site is the equivalent of real estate yuppie porn. One real estate analyst claims its houses are vastly overpriced or underpriced. Still another says Zillow has started a real estate revolution!
Actually, sites like Zillow’s can be a starting point for people who want to buy a house or building. If they realize that pricing is a generalization, they can still get an idea of what houses might cost in certain locations.
The developers of Zillow have it right when they say the hunger for information about real estate is infinite. Everyone is curious about the value of their own home, and homes of people they know, and the possible value of homes they would be interested in buying.
Richard Barton, co-founder of Zillow, however, says that the best information about real estate is locked up in people’s heads. The best way to root out the true value of a property is to tap into community knowledge.
Mark Lesswing, a senior vice president of the National Association of Realtors, says real estate agents don’t fear Zillow. They use it as a way to show how their services are more valuable than something people can get free on the web.
Consumers can count on the fact that their agent is familiar with the property and knows what it is worth based on community pricing and other factors, rather than a computer estimate.
Fortune also notes that hiring a real estate agent is like hiring an attorney. You might have every bit of legal information that the lawyer does, but would you want to represent yourself?
The same is true with buying or selling real estate. You might have a lot of information about a home or building, but representing yourself in a real estate transaction could be pretty risky too
Comments
Got something to say?