Why do agents hate Zillow ? Haven’t you wondered about this?
You’re working with a real estate agent. You mention Zillow. Your agent rolls their eyes, tells you it stinks and to not go there. You wonder what’s wrong with your Realtor.
Zillow is a presence in the real estate market; it’s important to understand both its positives and negatives.
Let’s start with the positives – You’ll find a tremendous amount of information. In addition to what you’d expect – homes, buyer/seller advice, mortgages – there’s information on home design, a great blog called Porchlight and a section on market trends/research. It’s easy to use and loads quickly.
So why the agent attitude? Because so much of it is incorrect and misleading. The blame for this lies with both agents and the website itself.
Homes listed on Zillow are edited by the listing agent. Agents don’t always keep on top of things. Price, status, details can all be incorrect. As incredible as it may seem, there have been times when a home sold over 1 year ago is still posted as active.
The more people who visit a website, the more it can charge advertisers. Zillow depends on its inventory of homes to attract people and they increase it by including homes no longer for sale. While such homes have a notice in light gray (not easy to see) saying the house isn’t for sale, many people miss this. 
Zillow puts a value on a house called a Zestimate. Zestimates ignore the 2 primary factors of value – location and condition. Zestimates, in my experience, are often wrong.
Zillow said it’s error rate nationally is 8% in June 2016. That’s huge. A $500,000 home can be $460,000 or $540,000.
So why do agents hate Zillow? Because buyers and sellers believe whatever is on it no matter how inaccurate. You can really be hurt because of this.
Zillow has a lot of good information but their Zestimates and market guidance can be highly inaccurate. The best information on a home’s status is still your local MLS website.
Want to talk more about this? Call, text or email me.
