How'd you like to be this poor sot? He's seen his property go up $10,000 in the last month. Well I guess that takes the sting out of going down $100,000 per month every month for the preceding three months. I know a little about this place. The zillow of $900k would cause a lot of trouble. Every interested agency would claim it wasn't an arms ength transaction. Inferior lots in the neighborhood go for more. Oh wait, that's my house (really).
The moral is trifold.
1. Zilllow ain't worth fer sh!t. They are like Casey, they are relying on the kindness of strangers to "add value" to their "product."
2. Timeframe is important in large events. Did I make $10k last month? Did I loose $300k in the previous three months? No and No. Is the house worth 5-6 times what I paid in 1995? Yes. In this case it is the $10k one month "bounce" that is wrong. Noise, neither up nor down, just noise.
3. Information has value. Whether you cotribute to the quality of the zestimates or the quality of IAFF with posts the result is relative added value. I'm not going email zillow and volunteer corrections to their wacky mathematical model and I'm not going to entertain Casey's readers with my comments.
21 comments:
Huh? No one commenting for 42 minutes? Rob Dawg - is your 15 minutes up? I sure hope not.
So, here it is: FIRST!
Unless you moderate now...
BTW: Casey is a moron.
I think this one confused the regulars. Nothing wrong with deciding to think on a post before replying. No offensem your comment is interesting as well.
There is abig discussion on bigpicture about the new CPI 3 digit reporting. Same thing and inspiration for this topic. Recommended.
Zillow doesn't mean shit. All that matters is the selling price. Zillow any house in Merced CA and you know it's garbage.
And to jump on the Casey tag, three comments on the IAFF Casey Corporate Credit Cash-ola post caught my eye; all speculate that Casey is yet again the mark:
Nigel, increasingly turned off Casey:
Of course it’s taking longer, that’s how scam artists string you along. They’re not asking for more money are they?
HungryBear:
[T]his is a variation of the “up front fee loan scam” which is one of the oldest scams in the book.
That's my guess too. Expect there soon to be some hitch with Casey's incorporation which will require him either to upgrade his package, pay for consulting, or...
NoVa Sideliner:
These expensive corporate attorneys: Who recommended them, exactly?
Was it the Corporation Brokers guys who used their long list of contacts and pointed you to these atorneys, or was it via completely independent referrals, perhaps from successful businessmen you know?
[...]
Even better, did the corporation brokers put up the MONEY for you to have the discussion with these attorneys? Do you get where I’m headed with this?
That's your and Theresa's place at 1617 Mariano?
Yo Rob, it's David from Zillow.
If you'd appreciate an explanation, please e-mail me your address and I'd look into it [davidg at zillow dot com] -- there is something strange going on in that graph.
David,
[sent and posted]
An explanation would be appreciated. If sent by email I'll respect any confidentiality, beter to post and spread the knowledge. TIA.
Regardless, I don't thikn you understand the nature of my "complaint" or observation. I understand that statistical formulae are the only way to handle the volume of data you are attempting to track. By the same metrics the average person has one tit and one testicle. Yah, like you've never heard that one before in your line of work. My point is that the model being used is not workable, it cannot take into consideration for instance that I overlook the 7th tee and have an unobstructable view ot the Topa Topa Mountains and beyond. There's no check box for abutting a blue line protected California Cosatl Comission stream or Williamson contract agricultural land or SOAR protected permanent Open Space. The comps adjustemnt breaks down where lot sizes and sq footage and cul-de-sac and incept dates are so wildly divergent.
What is strange going on in that graph is that the zillow model is broken. It isn't about the data being used it is about the model being incapable of correctly interpreting the data.
Zillow is useless for anything other than tract homes, where it is of extremely limited value.
http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=16346387
Zillow has wonderful uses! I use it all the time to see how large a home is, or what it sold for, or what the lot size is.
But, Robert, the model does not work. I think that it will over time and more and more homes get sold. The sales of a home held identify the real value. As Zillow gets more sales info the model wll vary less wildly.
my land and home are unusual and zillow means about as much as a squirt of piss to me. let's see...
it says $338,292. I have other data that puts the value between $150k and $235k. so i'd say they're on crack. or it's christmas. zillow is not a buyer. poor casey.
Casey must have sold our email addresses. Luckily I made up a Yahoo address for his site. I checked it today, over 200 emails from real estate and mortgage spams. I am forwarding them all to Casey.
barbmarie
Here is his lying misspelled response---I cant believe he left his number, I will start using that on forms where I make one up, for registration purposes, etc....
What makes you think that I sold you email address?
--
Casey Serin
916-595-9632
-----Original Message-----
From: barbara miles [mailto:barbmarie1@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 3:21 AM
To: casey@serin.us
Subject: Selling my email address
Since you decided to sell my email address, I have decided to forward
all my
real estate spam to you.
____________________________________________________________________________
Casey may have just been sloppy or even just victimized himself. 'Bots are everywhere scouring for email addresses. There's probably some fine print terms of service somewhere that some of us may have agreed to,newspaper article free registration and the like. He could have sold the addresses as well but I cannot think, short of laying a traphow to tell.
Rob -
If you send my your address, I'll reply either here or in mail -- your call. We learn from this feedback.
The Zestimate is not meant to be the final word on the value of your home. You're right -- there's much we don't know about your property. That said, the public records that we use as inputs to the Zestimate can be surprisingly detailed -- many counties record whether your home has a view (even the type of view) and of they do, we use that data to inform the Zestimate. Not all county records are equally complete or accurate though and this is the major reason Zestimate accuracy varies from region to region. It's also why Zillow allows owners to set the record straight by editing their home's facts.
The value attached to the unique attributes of your home is actually often implied by its past sales -- so where we have that data, Zestimates are also more accurate.
I need to take a look at your house on Zillow to start to understand whats wrong with it's graph but it's more likely that the raw data is either "broken" or incomplete than an issue with the model.
Lastly, homes on either end of the value range are obviously more difficult to accurately estimate -- if you live in the most expensive home in the neighborhood, expect us to be less accurate than if you live in the median home.
Funny how no one has anything nice to say about the sepcifics of zillow. Seems everytime someone is in a position to judge a specific property they observe that zill gets it wrong, usually very wrong.
Here is abit of fun at their expense. This is the Riverpark disaster we've been following.
http://www.zillow.com/HomeDetails.htm?zprop=2146997305
Brand new dozens if not hundreds of units unsold and this lucky owner has a make me move offer onthe web.
David,
I truly appreciate the exchange here. I'm sure Ispeakfor allthe readers when I say "thanks" for making the effort.
I amone of those annoying engineer types and worse one of my skills is precisely model validation. If you flyin airplanes with composite materials you'd better hope I'm good at it.
Past sales may be indicative but... youknew there are buts. Zill cannot correct for arms length transactions, tax basis transerences, estate divisions, divorces, inheiritance, etc. Likewise, sales price often and unfortunately is not transparent in the reported transaction price. Even honest sales have pitfalls. The property in question was both financially and physically distressed. Purchased in jul 1995 at the absolute bottomof the SoCal RE cycle from a bank, at the end of their fiscal quarter under regulatory pressure. The property had what was reported as an incurable foundation defect that made it essentially unsaleable to most buers as banks would not lend and such. Sales price had nothing to do with the property value regardless of its being a tract home or not.
As you noted in your first post there is something strange inthe graph. I don't know how interim points are derived but up $5k per week for 5 months followed by down $10k per week for 3 months is neither accurate nor precise. Clearly you have a model that is "hunting." That tells me that too much trend weight is tied to a poolof comps and also that the pool is not truly comparable. It's also clear that insufficent weighting is applied to land. Like most scalable elements this is not linear. An acre lot is not worth 4x a quarter acre lot. More?Less? That's a paying question. I'm sure zill would rather keep their model under lock and key and refine it themselves.
On the larger question I am uncomfortable with zillow because it is being misused. I know zill goes to great lengths to disavow those misuses in setting prices but it is clearly becoming a case of "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail." It has already happened that would be sellers have been forced explian the difference between zill and offer prices. The danger of tracking markets is moving markets. We saw how that worked in the stocks and index arbitrage.
Regoddin:
>>Casey must have sold our email addresses. Luckily I made up a Yahoo address for his site. I checked it today, over 200 emails from real estate and mortgage spams<<
Why on Earth would anyone use a primary email addres when registering for any website? In most instances, you can get away with a totally fake address such as butt@crack.org. If a functioning email addy is necessary for registration, use MAILINATOR , a convenient generator of throwaway addresses.
Zillow is useless in some areas. In my hood, it uses tax assessments, which have my house at $650-ish when it is worth closer to $900, and the palce next door for $260 when it recently sold for $610. Tax assessments in DC suck therefore Zillow sucks because it hasn't integrated enough other data sources.
Re. sales data:
One of the issues is that tax records don't show any of the closing cost help or sales incentives that are integral in sales in a declining market. i think the figures are overstated by at least 3% these days because of that flaw in the ability to collect good data.
Why on Earth would anyone use a primary email addres when registering for any website? In most instances, you can get away with a totally fake address such as butt@crack.org. If a functioning email addy is necessary for registration, use MAILINATOR , a convenient generator of throwaway addresses.
I didnt, I used a free Yahoo address. Just checked it to see whats going on, when others were complaining he was selling the addresses.
Zillow "Guess-Idiots" appear to rely on public tax records that in some cases haven't been updated in twenty-five years. The zestimator is a sketchy tool to rely on. I believe it's best to use a Professional Realtor when appraising property.
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