How to make Zillow love your house: Real estate pros share the tricks to getting a sky-high Zestimate
The Zestimate — available for homes both on and off the market — can carry serious weight. It is a powerful reference point for buyers, sellers, and nosy neighbors alike.
So, for sellers navigating today's rocky real estate landscape, understanding the Zestimate — and knowing how to influence it — is vital.
Zillow produces the home valuation tool for properties across the United States and Canada after crunching millions of data points to give you an up-to-date estimate.
It's often very close to the listing price — but with the right information, sellers can get it even higher.
Zillow's algorithm pulls from public records, recent sales, tax data, and user-submitted details. It factors in square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, location, and — when relevant — total days on the market to estimate a home's value.
Zestimate gets within 20 percent of the actual sale price for more than 99 percent of listed homes in cities like Atlanta, San Diego and Cincinnati.
What many homeowners don't realize: they can update their property's information on Zillow themselves — and in some cases, that can lead to a higher Zestimate.
According to Zillow, 'the nationwide median error rate for the Zestimate for on-market homes is 2.4 percent, while the Zestimate for off-market homes has a median error rate of 7.49 percent.'
When a homeowner makes a serious upgrade to a property, like a kitchen makeover or an additional bedroom, that may increase the value of the home, it's not always taken into consideration by Zillow.
Those updates can only be reflected in the final figure if you report them to your local Homeowners should pay attention when selling, because Zillow can fail to recognize if a listing has been renovated or upgraded.
In fact, there's a trick savvy sellers use value their homes at the highest price they can.
The tool is only as accurate as the data it's fed.
Homeowners can go into Zillow, and first, claim their home.
Claiming your home on Zillow means confirming you're the homeowner.
That gives you access to insights and tools to manage your property.
One Zestimate valued a house in New Jersey at $40k over the home's listed value
Using the owner dashboard, you can track your home's value, explore pricing options for a potential sale, and receive a home report email full of market trends, nearby listings, and recent sales.
Homeowners can also control update home details and assess equity.
Additions like a new kitchen, extra bathroom, or an inground pool and upgraded backyard can seriously raise the price of a home.
By refreshing the data, the Zestimate adjusts, and it will add thousands to your estimated value.
Zillow also has a home sale proceeds calculator.
That tool will calculate the final profits after sellers pay fees like repairs, closing costs, and the realtor's fee.
Zillow also offers its own directory of local estate agents, so when you're ready to sell, you can find a pro who knows your specific neighborhood — and how to get the highest price based on where you are located.
The listing service Redfin also internally estimates the value of a home.
Zillow is useful for homeowners to update home details and assess equity on the house
Zillow will calculate the final profits after sellers pay fees like repairs and closing costs
Chief Redfin economist Daryl Fairweather says the estimate quickly factors in more than 500 data points about the market, the neighborhood, and the home itself.
Homeowners can't self-edit listings on the site but they can have Redfin adjust for any changes.
'Since it's an automated estimate, homeowners aren't able to manipulate their estimate without reaching out to our team,' Fairweather tells DailyMail.com.
'If and when homeowners do reach out and share more details with us about their home like major renovations, expansions, changes in condition, we incorporate that feedback, which helps make our estimates more accurate.
'Homeowners can also create their own owner estimate, which enables them to choose comparable homes that are most similar to their own.'
Fairweather adds that it's important to keep in mind that there are many factors outside of a homeowner's control that can affect your home's value, including buyer demand and prices of neighboring homes.
The Zestimate trick can be particularly useful for a home to stand out amid a surplus of listings in the impending Florida housing crash.
Active listings are currently at a record high in Florida's metros, such as Miami-Dade, Cape Coral, North Port-Sarasota and Deltona-Daytona Beach.
Florida is suffering from surging insurance costs and HOA fees following a rise in natural disasters and the Surfside building collapse in 2021.
More frequent natural disasters in the state, such as hurricanes and flooding, have driven up insurance costs and led homeowners associations to raise fees in anticipation of repairs and mitigation needs.
Many homeowners now face fees greater than their mortgage payments, sparking a wave of distressed sales across the state.
Sellers have slashed prices by up to 40 percent with some units wiping almost half a million off their asking price.
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