Being a major real estate website these days almost seems as hard as being U.S. President. For every person who claims you're great there's one more who says you're terrible. All the major sites have been in the news for a long time, especially recently, vilified by consumers, agents, and the media for a bunch of flaws. The PR agents for these firms have their hands full trying to handle all the negativity in a manner that makes sense. Is it really their fault? Perhaps not as much as you might think.
DATA, DATA, DATA...
One of the biggest arguments against these sites is that the listings are old, not valid, or not accurate (price, size, etc wrong). From what I can see, that's the source of the most derision. BOTTOM LINE: All the sites have flawed data in one form or another. REALITY CHECK: There are a lot of good reasons these companies have the data wrong including:
- The county tax records are wrong
- The agent listed it and forgot it
- The seller (FSBO) listed it and forgot it
- General data entry errors by assistants and others
- Merged records errors
All of these reasons are outside the control of the major real estate websites. Could they put measures into place to regulate this? Absolutely. With millions of records nationwide, it's not a small job. Take their results with a grain of salt.
STATISTICS, VALUES, AND OTHER INACCURACIES...
Another huge argument against Trulia, Realtor.com, and especially Zillow is how they represent data. Very few sites offer "sold" information and sometimes the statistics of homes sold, average selling price, and other data points are not entirely accurate. For example, the Zestimate is deemed useless in many areas because, as Zillow rightfully states, there is a 10% or more margin of error. Consumers and agents don't pay attention to that fine detail - IT'S JUST AN ESTIMATE. The desire is to take these things at face value, as if they came straight from the local MLS. Don't! If you want accurate market statistics using the entire scope of data, visit the local MLS or, better yet, talk to your local agent. The stats on many of these sites are what they are, stop blaming them.
The major real estate websites do the best they can with the millions of property records they have and the millions of consumers accessing them. At the end of the day, they'll never be as accurate as the local MLS or your local real estate agent. They're a great place to start, but not the place to stay. Call an agent and get it right.
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Bryan Robertson, Broker Associate | T: 650.799.9951 | Email: bryan@serenogroup.com | Website: http://www.BryanRobertsonHomes.com |CA License: 01191946 | Sereno Group - Los Altos branch | 369 S. San Antonio Road | Los Altos, CA 94022
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Zillow is terrible because their algorimth to determine property values is completely off base and gives consumers/sellers/buyers unrealistic prices. I agree that consumers dont read the fine print that it's simply an estimate, but regardless people still try to use those figures towards market values. I find that they are typically so far off even from a reasonable margin of error that it negates the point in even having a "zestimate".
I also dislike how Trulia and Zillow pull my listing information and let other realtors buy advertising space when viewing my listing so consumers will click on the advertisement...they are making money off me and my sellers and we have nothign to show for it!
I am a fan of Realtor.com however!
Hi Bryan, thanks for the info and pointing out what we all know; garbage in, garbage out!
I advise would-be rental prospects that they have found a listing on a MIGRATION site and should contact me through the listing option from the property listing on MY website....
I tell all potential clients to use my local website, that way they get a truer idea of what is actually still on the market. I know right away when someone calls me and asks about a property that sold 8 months ago where they were.
Hey Brian - Brad from Zillow here.
First of all I wouldn't say we are being treated badly by agents or consumers. Consumers, Agents, and Brokers love our site and for a multitude of reasons. 31 million visited our site last month, a new record.
I can't and won't speak for the other companies. I also wish others wouldn't lump us all into the same soup bowl because our business models are each unique. We are each different from the other, it's like combining Microsoft, Google, and Craigslist.
Howard Hanna, the 4th largest real estate company in the Country just partnered with Zillow, there is a press release in the link below. Also you'll find the importance of "strategic distribution" and how Zillow works with listing agents on our site. This will answer many questions and debunk many myths and false claims out there.
Bob Bemis has also joined Zillow as the VP of Partner Relations which you can read about as well. Regarding the zestimates that some address on Zillow, most folks including consumers understand that they are just a starting point and not an actual appraisal. We always have and will suggest consumers get an expert local real estate professional and appraiser to come up with the best "fair-market" value price.
Here's that link for the articles I mentioned above, take a look at the top 5 most recently posted and feel free to leave any comments or concerns here to: http://www.zillow.com/blog/category/professionals/
You know my door is always open if you ever need any assistance or have any questions at all. Thanks.
Hi Brad - I wrote this, not to further vilify Zillow (or the other companies), but to point out that there are reasons for the issues people hold against the major real estate sites that have nothing to do with the sites themselves. I went back to change the terminology of some of my article so that message is a bit more clear.
I hope I'm helping establish that agents themselves and others are the sources of issues with data accuracy, not always the sites themselves. I just sold a house where one comp had county record data that was wrong. There was a note in the listing...and that not something most people would likely catch during data integration.
My point in this article is really that the various sites are fine for what they do, data and statistic accuracy is something outside their control on many occasions, and consumers need to turn to their local agents to get the real story.
GIGO: Garbage IN - Garbge OUT.
Dirty data is a big problem throughout the real estate industry. County records are often wrong. MLS data is often wrong. Most agents make corrections as soon as they become obvious, but not always. Did you know that public "County Records" are often transcribed manually, by a third party, and entered into a database? The quality varies a lot from county to county.
An AVM (Automated Valuation Model) is the artificial intellgence (AI) behind the sites like Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, and Corefact's Instant Home Value Estimate. These algorithms assume, for the most part, that the data is good, or that errors may "average out" to cancel each other, in our real world. People should not put too much trust in an automated tool. A good agent with local knowledge can do far better!
With Corefact, the agent steps in and offers a CMA, if the owner is a prospective seller and serious about listing.
In the case of Trulia, it would be great if they properly updated the status of the listings on their website. Under contract properties routinely show as active weeks after their status was changed or even after they are sold... the only reason that I can think of for this is to drive traffic to their website and drive them to paying agents.
just my $0.02...
Great post! That has been my biggest complaint. I had one listing that said it was waterfront on zillow and trulia. I went back to all my listing syndication and MLS sites to make sure I didn't accidentally mark "waterfront". I had not! I had no way to change it and had to constantly argue that with my buyers who would call on the property.
Hi Everyone - this is Emily from Trulia,
Bryan, thanks so much for delivering a very realistic perspective on the subject of data inaccuracy. It isn’t something we take lightly at all, but, as you correctly stated, it’s a very big job and takes a ton of effort to make seemingly small improvements.
AJ, I can promise that we don’t keep pending properties on our site to drive up traffic. That creates a bad consumer experience and that’s definitely not what we’re after. We receive property information from many sources and those sources can be slow to update, or may not be updated at all. That’s why we created our Direct Reference program in which we work with MLSs to confirm the accuracy of those other sources and proactively alert agents if they have a stale listing on another site.
Stacia, I’m sorry to hear about the difficulties you experienced with your listing. Since the error was present on both Trulia and Zillow, I’d venture to guess that there was some misinformation with the data feed that was sent to us. Feel free to send me the address so we can see if the relevant information is still in our database so we can pinpoint the source of that misinformation.