I realize that the Zestimate feature is very inaccurate, however, I own a few rentals and a primary residence and Zillow consistently has my primary residence and one of my rentals hands down the lowest in the entire neighborhood. Now the reason this is particularly odd to me is that my primary is a Drees home and the rental in question is a Darling home. Meaning there are literally several homes in these neighborhoods that are the EXACT SAME floor plan as mine. Compared to these same floor plans they have my homes listed anywhere from $30-60k lower. . ..a huge difference.

I realize this is a silly exercise but its starting to drive me crazy. . .there are no reasons I can think of to justify this. . in fact, my homes actually have nicer amenities then some of the ones being valued so much higher. .. ..any idea why this is happening?

I understand that. I guess I should've clarified more Literally all the other houses in the neighborhood seem to be in the same range and then mine comes in tens of thousands of dollars lower It's strange

I can't remember if Zillow, Trulia or both have links to building permits but I know at least one of them does. As a shot in the dark or throwing crap at the wall, is it possible they look at the number of building permits and values that have been pulled on homes and have a metric that assigns a portion of that in to their estimated price? That would appear to be the case based on general market trends in my neighborhood when looking at the same houses from the same builder of the same age.

-pool permit gets a certain amount of the permit value added to house. New roof building permit, etc, etc.? If you do your own work your properties after 10-15 years could be significantly lower on the guesstimates than similar in the neighborhood because they had no building permit to look at.

-You can see the trend for home location on cul de sac streets in our appraisal district. Culdesac locations high, middle of the street lower, houses on corner by entrance to street lowest. Almost a declining line from the culdesac to the entrance but not linear. Would the guesstimates also do something similar possibly?

I have no clue....does anybody know?

do you protest your tax appraisal? Maybe the zestimate uses a multiplier from the tax records and yours are lower because you successfully protest

I bought the lowest price per square foot house in my old neighborhood in 2011. It mainly because of a structural design issue that when removed it would dramatically change the entire value of the home. The house had a gazebo in the middle of the entry way. We put in beams and it went from a disaster to a wow statement when people walked in. The rest of the house was incredible. People just couldn't get over the gazebo.

Zillow must have taken the old list price on the house and then tracked it upward with the market. Our home constantly lagged behind everything else in the neighborhood. When we went to sell it last March, we listed it $100,000 over the zillow estimate. We had a contract in 3 days.

Sounds like Zillow has been contracting out your zestimate value to some of the appraisers we've seen talked about on here in the past.

(PS- not any of the aggie appraisers, they are good people)

aggiemike89 said:

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If you're in Texas, the answer is simple. Texas is a non-disclosure state. Zillow zestimate means nothing. If you want a closer number to market value, have a realtor do a market analysis on each property.
I'll send you one if you send me the addresses.

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would you be able to do this for my property? my wife and I are considering a couple options and would like to know if our home is of value to do anything with, or stay put

Sure if you are in the Houston area? I don't have access to SA, Dallas or Austin's MLS. Email me the address.
Mike at mikeschroederteam dot com.

Sure no problem. Can I do it Monday? Turkey day tomorrow and then headed out deer hunting for the weekend. Is Monday soon enough?

OP, have you made an account and reviewed all your features? You can easily change your value on Zillow.