Untold tales
I just went on Zillow.com's website to see what they're up to and noticed a house for sale (by owner) located at 12 Lockwood Road in Riverside and asking, according to Zillow, $6,000,000. Zillow estimates its worth at $2,566,000 and I think even that figure's high. The current owners paid $2,305,000 for it in March of last year and apparently have done nothing to it, so what gives? Is this seller insanity or an error by Zillow? If it's Zillow's fault, the owner ought to check his bait more often. If the seller himself set the price, it only serves as a demonstration of why some objective advice can sometimes be a good thing.
Update
As a commentator notes below, this is a Zillow feature called "make me move", which is, as he or she says, a "pie in the sky" price placed on it by the owner w/o any intention of actually placing it on the market. Good thing, too, because,as I saw in another Zillow listing, it looks like these owners aren't going anywhere soon. I do wonder, though, at Zillow's own calculation of value. The owner of 16 Willow Road's "make me move" price is $3,995,000, which ain't gonna happen; Zillow's own estimate is $3,600,000 and that's not reality either, in my opinion. 2 Willow, a more modern house, sold for $3,100,000, in a better market. If you're selling moving services, don't bother with these guys.
2 years ago
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3 comments:
That is just the make me move price, which is the owner's pie in the sky price to high tail it of town. The price is meaningless and not tied to reality.
Hi, it's David from Zillow.com,
kbird nailed it; Make Me Move prices can be total fantasy and that's OK but I was surprised when we last analyzed the difference between MMM and Zestimate values and found the average variance to be only 14%. Some Make Me Move listings are reasonably priced and several of them have sold.
In a hot sellers' market, MMM can be an interesting place to find homes with less buyer competition. In this market however, buyers are already spoiled for choice amongst the almost 3 million listings on Zillow.
Chris, I'd be interested in hearing more thoughts from you about what Zillow has done to change (either positively or negatively) the house-buying process. How have you had to handle questions from buyers or sellers that relate to Zillow, in particular where a seller is upset by a lower "Zestimate" than he thinks the house is actually worth.
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