This short article explores the dangers of home sellers relying on Zillow’s estimates (aka Zestimates) when pricing a home. Home sellers tend to hurt themselves when they assume their home is worth a certain amount just because “Zillow said so,” and here’s why…

The truth is that Zestimates are usually inflated. Using inflated sales price data to price your home puts you at a distinct financial disadvantage because overpriced homes sit on the market longer than necessary and become “stale listings.” In addition to taking longer to sell, a stale listing can eventually sell for less than the same home that is properly priced from the start.

In order to prove the prevalence of Zestimate value inflation we did our own analysis, specific to the Las Vegas luxury market, and compared actual sales prices from December 2018 to their Zestimates, which we pulled on January 7th, 2019.

Using the data above, we calculated that 82.5% of these homes had Zestimates higher than the actual sales price. Even worse, homes in the highest price range generally had the most inaccurate Zestimates. Out of the top 10 highest priced homes sold, 7 were overvalued by Zillow at an average of 18.06%. In fact, Zillow overvalued one home by $1,267,644! Homes priced under $1,000,000 fared slightly better but still suffered from an average overvaluation of 9.74%.

As you can see, there’s just no substitute for our professional experience. If you live in the Las Vegas area and want to sell your home in 2019, we’d be happy to give you a FREE home evaluation. When valuing your home, we take into account all aspects of your specific property. This experience can never be replaced by a Zestimate.