
Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth - e15ctr0n
https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/zillow-faces-lawsuit-over-zestimate-tool-that-calculates-a-houses-worth/2017/05/09/b22d0318-3410-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html
======
strictnein
The Zillow estimate used to be spot on in our neighborhood, for several years
even. Recently they all plunged to 10-20% below market value, even though all
sales data puts it at the previous mark. The weird thing is that they also
went back and recalculated old "Zestimate" data as well. On April 2nd the
estimate for our house was $617,453, which is more or less what it would sell
for. It had been above $600k since June, 2016.

This month it was $544k, and there's no sign it ever got above $580k in the
historic graph. It claims it was $546k on March 31st.

One thing I did notice was a new button underneath the estimate: "I disagree
with my Zestimate" which, surprisingly enough, is a lead gen for realtors, not
a method to try and get them to change.

~~~
colordrops
I live in a hot real estate market (L.A.), and I've spent about 5 minutes (no
exaggeration) looking online at the prices of houses in my neighborhood,
knowing the actual closing price of recent sales, and my first thought was
that prices were about 10-20% below market value.

It's funny that this is obvious to someone like myself who has spent virtually
no time dealing with real estate, let alone people heavily entrenched in the
process.

~~~
WaxProlix
This is the same in Seattle, where a house's asking price can be 550, its
zestimate (or Redfin estimate) will be around 570, and the price it actually
goes for invariably ends up around 700. This has been the case for months, and
it can almost seem like some sort of conspiracy between realtors and these
meta-agencies to game the market. There are plenty of comps that show prices
are WAY above what the 'estimates' show, and yet these professionals are
seemingly oblivious. Fear of another 2008? Too much success drumming up
bidding wars by underpricing? Whatever the reason, it's pretty infuriating as
a buyer because it creates a sort of information asymmetry which makes a major
decision really painful.

~~~
tehlike
Yes. Some known realtors underprice the property to start bidding war.

The foreign money in the hot markets also doesnt help. It sucks to see a house
list for 2.9m and sell for 3.7. it happens quite often here in the bay.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
In Australia a law was introduced where realtors had to provide realistic
values for property that went to auction.

Before that if you were looking at 2 bedroom apartments, around Sydney, you'd
just mentally add 400k. Not sure if it's better now or not.

~~~
djrogers
The properties in GP's post are not likely to be sold at auction - very few
homes are sold that way in the US.

The 'bidding war' referred to is a standard listing/sale that receives
multiple offers. If the interest is high enough, the seller may counter all of
the offers and reveal the highest price, forcing the bidding.

~~~
WaxProlix
Even without revealing the highest offer, the offers themselves constitute a
silent auction, which is where a lot of the information asymmetry comes from.
If I could speak to each of the other people and tell them I had X amount to
spend we could all agree to walk away or make offers without going through a
bunch of hassle and (for 32 of 33 offerers) heartbreak. The process really
highlights to me how broken certain types of 'market' can be when there's a
monopoly of information.

~~~
tehlike
What you are talking is second price auction.

Winner gets the house, but pays the price of the runner-up. I wish this
existed.

~~~
infinite8s
Why would a seller agree to this type of auction?

~~~
skj
To get people to be more aggressive with their bids.

------
razwall
Take a look at the law they're suing under, regarding licensing of real estate
appraisers
([http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=02250...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=022504580HArt%2E+5&ActID=1368&ChapterID=24&SeqStart=500000&SeqEnd=1900000)).

It makes it illegal to "develop a real estate appraisal" without a license. An
appraisal is defined as simply "an opinion of value". So if you are driving
down the street and say to your spouse, "Look at that house, it's gotta be
worth a million bucks," you just committed a misdemeanor.

This law as it's written has got to be unconstitutional.

~~~
Mathnerd314
> nor does this Act apply to the procurement of an automated valuation model.
> "Automated valuation model" means an automated system that is used to derive
> a property value through the use of publicly available property records and
> various analytic methodologies such as comparable sales prices, home
> characteristics, and historical home price appreciations.

If that sentence applies, I don't think they really have a case...

~~~
gnicholas
Good point. But what does "procurement" mean in this context? The plain
meaning is "obtain", but that doesn't really make sense here. The word isn't
used elsewhere in this document but is presumably defined somewhere.

If it is interpreted to mean "use", then the case is a loser as you say. But I
wouldn't want to be the lawyer tasked with arguing to the judge that "the
legislature meant 'use' but decided to say 'procurement' instead".

~~~
Mathnerd314
Generally in law you use a law dictionary, e.g.
[http://thelawdictionary.org/procurement/](http://thelawdictionary.org/procurement/),
which defines it as "the entire process of purchasing goods". "Entire" there
suggests a broad term, hence interpreted inclusively in the context it
appears. So in context it's probably something like "commercial use". But
there are other questions of applicability, e.g. whether the legislature
intended that sentence to only apply to financial loan decisions. It seems
like there's no indicator of legislative intent on the original bill
[https://openstates.org/il/bills/96th/HB1015/](https://openstates.org/il/bills/96th/HB1015/),
hence it would probably be the plain meaning as an independent clause, but
IANAL...

~~~
gnicholas
In my experience (7 years as a corporate lawyer), a law dictionary would only
be consulted for legal terms of art, which "procurement" is not. For most
terms, a regular dictionary definition is used.

At any rate, I don't see how the definition cited would clear up the matter.
It's a big leap from "the entire process of purchasing goods" to "commercial
use". Like "use", which I discuss above, "commercial use" is a common term of
art, and it would be strange to say "procurement" if what you mean is
"commercial use".

~~~
Mathnerd314
Well, I was trying to shift the focus to "automated valuation model". That's
used in other places and seems to be a term of the art in finance, e.g. this
Kansas consumer bill:
[http://kslegislature.com/li_2016/b2015_16/measures/documents...](http://kslegislature.com/li_2016/b2015_16/measures/documents/sb100_00_0000.pdf)
Hence Zillow probably doesn't qualify, since it doesn't do loans or banking.

But the courts are so random; I'm guessing this case will be determined
primarily by how much the judge that gets assigned likes technology. It'll be
interesting to follow up on.

------
e15ctr0n
Realtors have always hated the Zestimate with a passion [0]. When they
publicly called out Zillow CEO for selling his own home for 40% less than the
Zestimate on it, Zillow magically released a superior algorithm [2].

[0] Inaccurate Zillow 'Zestimates' a source of conflict over home prices | Feb
8, 2015 | [http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-
harney-2015...](http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-
harney-20150208-story.html)

[1] Zillow CEO sold his home for 40% less than Zestimate | May 18, 2016 |
[http://www.inman.com/2016/05/18/zillow-ceo-spencer-
rascoff-s...](http://www.inman.com/2016/05/18/zillow-ceo-spencer-rascoff-sold-
home-for-much-less-than-zestimate/)

[2] Zillow Boosts Accuracy with Update to Zestimate Algorithm | June 8, 2016 |
[http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2016-06-08-Zillow-Boosts-
Accurac...](http://zillow.mediaroom.com/2016-06-08-Zillow-Boosts-Accuracy-
with-Update-to-Zestimate-Algorithm)

~~~
strictnein
[1] reminds of an interview with the founder of Ashley Madison.

He was going on and on about how western cultures were so regressive and prude
about adultery and sex in general. The interviewer then asked him if he had
ever used his own service. This elicited an uncomfortable non-answer that
basically boiled down to "No".

~~~
allenbrunson
"non-answers" are never good, of course, but i can easily see a way he could
give a workable answer to that question. for example, he could say that some
people are trapped in loveless marriages they can't get out of, but he never
has been, so he's not the target customer.

of course i'm just playing devil's advocate, because all evidence points to
ashley madison being a scam, with essentially no women on the site.

~~~
chii
> with essentially no women on the site.

I would have thought that some gold diggers would sign up for that sweet
mistress money!

------
tabeth
You would think real estate would prove to be one of the few real life fields
where machine learning would be able to predict the prices pretty accurately.
You have:

1\. List price

2\. "Favorites" on the MLS.

3\. Square footage

4\. Bedrooms

5\. Bathrooms

6\. Sold price for nearby properties

7\. Sold price for nearby properties _relative to their list price_

And the list goes on... Is it that difficult to predict? Literally there are
hundreds of other features that have a clear correlation to the sell price
(amount of people who attend the open house, crime, proximity to busy street,
etc.) that I'm not including. I guess the problem is, there's not any money in
having an accurate prediction.

~~~
mattkrause
If you want to try it, there are a few data sets kicking around, including

a) [https://www.kaggle.com/c/house-prices-advanced-regression-
te...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/house-prices-advanced-regression-techniques)

b)
[http://www.bis.org/statistics/pp_detailed.htm](http://www.bis.org/statistics/pp_detailed.htm)

c)
[https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/housing](https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/housing)

If you had a really great model, you might be able to make some money with it
--find underpriced (per the model) houses, buy them, and then try to sell them
at the model's price.

~~~
sidlls
Real estate markets are rarely liquid. Such models would have to take that
into account, of course, and that isn't something I'd think is straightforward
at all.

~~~
stupidhn
> _Such models would have to take that into account_

I believe the liquidity of the asset is inherently taken into account in the
price at which the exchange is made.

~~~
sidlls
Why do you believe that, out of curiosity?

The reason I think it isn't straightforward to account for is based on several
things: it isn't fungible, the purchase date can have little or no
relationship to the price, and the means of purchase typically carry other
time-based constraints that are also not necessarily related to price
(although they can be). Furthermore, the liquidity in a given market may
change fairly quickly and without any (apparent) other reason.

I haven't tried to develop a model for this, so this is just sort of a gut
feel for how difficult feature engineering to account for how a market behaves
in this respect might be. And that "gut feel" is mainly informed by my
experience purchasing and selling property (for personal and rental use).

~~~
stupidhn
> _Why do you believe that, out of curiosity?_

Because the liquidity of an asset is a form of risk.

> _The reason I think it isn 't straightforward_

I don't think it's straightforward either, but that only means individual's
valuation might be way off.

~~~
sidlls
I'm not convinced that risk as used in this context contributes to price
significantly in the residential real estate market. People in this market
don't (typically) view transactions as investments and they don't view the
home as assets. Lenders do, so the availability of mortgage funds may be
linked to price and liquidity but I suspect that relationship is tenuous at
best.

------
narrowrail
As long as there are already many anecdotes, I'll just add mine (I've always
taken the zestimate as Zillow's working model that probably needs lots of
tweaking; it's not like the MLS's are eager to give them data).

Anecdote: My folks live in a golf course neighborhood where their house is not
on the course, and it's smaller than the rest. However, my folks house is
valued based on these extravagant golf-course side properties that are
actually quite a bit more $/sqft. Zillow needs to have a human go through
manually and adjust for these subtle differences, IMO.

Despite dome shortcommings, Zillow is a godsend compared to the systems local
MLS's use, just the listing dates/listing removed dates/ last sold for/ days
on market dates are worth a lot. Realtors can give you this info, but it is
not nearly as frictionless as it could be.

Zillow is still looking for that disruptive go-to-market strategy (they
already have most of the tools). But, the Realtors aren't going to give up
their ~$6K per transaction fees easily. They're much more connected than cab
drivers.

~~~
linkregister
Do you see Redfin eating a traditional realtor's lunch?

~~~
narrowrail
This is an obsession of mine, but I'm not a professional. I dated/ lived with
a Realtor for ~20mo, and I asked lots of questions about the workflow of the
business.

I don't think Redfin has much of an edge in go-to-market strategy. Redfin's
allows for more comprehensive data (MLS access because of membership), and
Zillow's allows for scalability. Sales data sometimes show 3 months lag from
time of transaction and entry into the county clerk's records which gives the
MLS quite an edge itself.

------
cavanasm
I wonder how many other tech companies fit into this general category of
"providing an equivalent to a regulated service without meeting the
regulations". You've got the more obvious "sharing economy" type things which
are in the news all over the place lately, but I bet there are a bunch of
other companies like Zillow that have been flying under the radar for a while.

~~~
lotsofpulp
If a homeowner or homebuyer is paying someone to assess the value of a
property, requiring expertise and training in inspection of a house such as
materials, build quality, plumbing and whatnot, I could understand needing
government approval.

This is just someone saying what they they think something is worth. Do I need
a license before I can say "I think a certain car is only worth $25k instead
of $30k"?

~~~
droopyEyelids
Yeah- also what if you make up a brand new word to ensure people see it's not
an estimate. A Pulpstimate or something.

~~~
vageli
Or Zestimate, even.

------
jartelt
People are way too tough on Zillow. The article states that the Zestimate is
within 5% of the sale price 54% of the time and within 20% of the sale price
90% of the time. That is pretty damn good considering they do not send anyone
to look at the outside of homes and they do not go inside homes like an
appraiser does. The problem is that people think the value of their homes is
equal to what they paid for it plus some percentage gain every year. In
reality, the value is just whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. You can
think your house is worth a million dollars, but it is not worth a million
dollars if no one will pay that much for it.

~~~
mehwoot
_The problem is that people think the value of their homes is equal to what
they paid for it plus some percentage gain every year._

How is this the problem when you just stated previously that the price is 20%
off from reality for 10% of people.

The real problem is a shitty estimate becoming something that people treat as
a real estimate. Zillow obviously state this isn't the intention, but if they
act in a way that promotes it as an estimate contrary to what they state they
are doing, well, people are going to get angry.

------
ProfessorLayton
At least in the Bay Area, Zillow et al. are decent for getting a decently
accurate ballpark figure in mind. A lot of sale prices are clearly put up
below market to grab attention, knowing that the sale price is very likely to
exceed it by a wide margin.

Here in many parts of the Bay, you'll get laughed at and promptly ignored if
you try and use these "zestimates" to try and put downward pressure on the
price. Sellers here have many offers to chose from, leading buyers to compete
not just on price, but even dropping certain contingencies to push the deal
through.

~~~
hbosch
A friend was looking at houses via Redfin. The agent told him on day 1 that he
should expect to spend 10%–20% more than the online quote, as a rule of thumb.

Since then I've taken "Zestimates" with ~65,000 to 100,000 grains of salt.

~~~
Jemaclus
I used to work for Z, and I can confirm that the Zestimate is just that: an
estimate. It doesn't know things like whether you did renovations or whether
the house next door caught on fire and burned down and things like that. If
something about your particular house changed in the last few years, the
Zestimate is likely to be way off. That said, it's fairly good as far as comps
go, and if you have an average house in the hood, the Zestimate is gonna be
pretty close.

Regarding the rule of thumb you mentioned, my wife and I have been looking for
a house in the Bay Area, and we've determined that the listing price is just a
completely made up number. We made an offer on a house that was 100K over
asking price, and the sellers countered with 40K on top of that (so 140K over
asking). I was like... what? You listed for X, we offered X+100K, you don't
get to counter that. lol

We obviously didn't get the house, and they wound up selling for 175K over
asking price (+~25%). We've made several other offers, and sometimes the house
goes for 50K over asking and sometimes it goes for 250K over asking. It just
seems to be totally random. It's absurd. Instead, we actually rely a lot on
the Zestimate and Redfin's estimate to figure out what the "real" value of the
house is. Z and R tend to be roughly in the right ballpark for the Bay Area.

~~~
djrogers
> I was like... what? You listed for X, we offered X+100K, you don't get to
> counter that

Apparently they do, because...

>they wound up selling for 175K over asking price

And, as for this:

>Instead, we actually rely a lot on the Zestimate and Redfin's estimate to
figure out what the "real" value of the house is

Let me give you a lesson from econ 101 - the 'real' value of something is
whatever someone else is willing to pay for it. If multiple people are willing
to pay more than Zillow or Redfin estimate, then the 'real' value is higher.

------
joezydeco
I'd also like to know how or why Zillow lists houses that are "pre-
foreclosure".

I know it's semi-public record, but that certainly doesn't help the homeowner
try and recover maximum value for their property if they decide to sell.

On top of that, it's pretty unnerving when you see this pop up for one of your
neighbors and good friends. Nobody should have to go through even more
humiliation than they already are.

~~~
narrowrail
If you ever hover over the URLs, Zillow is using a 3rd-party service for the
forclosure potential properties. It's lead gen, and you have to become a
customer to get actionable data.

~~~
joezydeco
If the house goes up for sale, I can lowball the owner without ever having to
buy data from that 3rd party.

------
natoliniak
Interesting. I wonder what would her argument be if Zillow simply reported the
City/County tax assessors estimates which are usually even lower than
Zillow's.

~~~
BeetleB
>I wonder what would her argument be if Zillow simply reported the City/County
tax assessors estimates which are usually even lower than Zillow's.

County assessors for tax purposes are _explicitly_ not trying to determine
market price. Zillow should ignore it.

~~~
leftandright
I'm not sure what you mean.

In Illinois (the state from the article) the assessor is calculating the
market value:

Most real property in Illinois must be assessed based on its value on the open
market, or its “market value.” This value is the amount at which a property
would sell in a competitive and open market... [1]

[1][http://tax.illinois.gov/Publications/LocalGovernment/PTAX100...](http://tax.illinois.gov/Publications/LocalGovernment/PTAX1004.pdf)

~~~
BeetleB
Then it likely varies from state to state - or county to county.

See [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/tax/09/calculate-
proper...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/tax/09/calculate-property-
tax.asp) for different methods used. As an example, some places merely look at
the cost of replacing the house if destroyed.

------
CobrastanJorji
> Zestimates are within 20 percent 89.7 percent of the time, Zillow claims.

So, for an area where the homes average around $500,000, more than 1 in 10
estimates are off by $100,000 or more? That seems kinda bad.

~~~
paulgb
Do humans do any better, I wonder? That seems pretty good for an illiquid
market. (But what do I know, I've always rented)

------
IanDrake
The realtors I talk to hate the Zillow estimate as it typically creates an
unrealistic expectation for either the seller or buyer depending on if the
algorithm over or under estimates.

Apparently it's rarely correct, though I live in a unique area.

~~~
lotsofpulp
If it's not correct, then the sale price will reflect that and Zillow's
reputation will take a hit.

Don't understand why the government needs to get involved in what someone says
something is worth, it's their opinion and they're entitled to it.

Edit: It would be funny if Zillow also started putting up alerts about
problems with government finances which will likely impact future taxes, such
as in Illinois.

~~~
geppeto
The government's not getting involved, oh you mean the fact that a judge is
going to be involved?

Civil courts exist to provide monetary damages if damages can be proved to
exist. Yes, they can also compel arbitrary behavior as a part of governing
body.

This is independent of any stance on Zillow and a state licensing regime. If
the plaintiff can convince that the tool is making her lose money, the judge
will award her money.

"but that means < cue completely uninformed legal analogy >" yes you can make
a career out of litigation, many people have.

~~~
lovich
It cant just be the plaintiff proving that Zillow's tool makes her lose money,
can it? If that argument was true then you could get sued and lose for
reporting on facts that put the company in a bad light, like poor hygiene in a
restaurant, or for competing with another company with a better product.

~~~
geppeto
you have to also show up and defend yourself.

many summary judgements on flaky arguments are made just because the defendant
didn't respond. the judgements are collected from you bank in any jurisdiction
that will reciprocate

------
anonymous_iam
The estimate for my house dropped by 25% in one month when the market was
still rising. I'm assuming that the cause was the house next door which was in
poor condition and was sold for about 20% below market value. The buyer put
$100k into the house and is now selling it above market value ($200k more). It
will be interesting to see what the zestimate for my house will be when the
other house sells again. (It will probably sell within a month.)

------
simonhughes22
I have had both our homes (we rent one out) independently estimated and both
are worth 25-30% more than the Zestimate. I live in IL like the realtor in the
article. Zillow is consistently lower than other sites. The most accurate
estimates for our home are on Redfin, which is almost perfectly inline with
the appraiser's estimates. Zillow has a pretty overfit model IMO.

~~~
brians
If the estimator didn't offer to buy your house, what makes you think it's
accurate?

------
tracker1
At's an algorithm based on available data... it may not be accurate, but that
doesn't mean it's too wrong. Also, if you put in expensive features, doesn't
mean your house will sell for twice as much in a given neighborhood. Pricing
is fairly collective with main factors being property size, home size,
bedrooms/bathrooms and some influence on features, namely pool, garage(s) etc.

That doesn't mean it's entirely wrong, unless there are manual tweaks
happening to shape specific markets, which may be proven/disproven through
discovery. Aside from that, there's the legal aspects in different states and
counties in terms of what a licensed/unlicensed seller is allowed to do.

I would say that if the market is more than 20% off in terms of actual sales
from the Zestimate, then there may be something up... The Phoenix market seems
pretty accurate to within 5-10%, which is pretty reasonable.

------
digitalpacman
Thing is, all appraisers do a bad job. Evaluating a house is completely up to
their opinion, and the artificially increase prices just because houses are
selling. They drive prices up and down based no their will. Couldn't their job
be legitimately done by a computer and a camera? Probably if the technology
was there.

------
MichaelBurge
This is as ridiculous as suing Nolo for publishing law books without a
license.

The only reason why the government needs to have an appraisal license at all
is because the government handles the loan for the house. The goal is to
mitigate the risk to the government, not to help consumers decide how much
they want to pay.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Or it is to minimize the number of cases that go to court with people
squabling over how much something is worth.

------
averagewall
Sounds like an opportunity for arbitrage that would correct the problem. If
"house flippers" start using these low prices to make a quick buck, either
Zillow or homeowners are surely going to cotton on and things will settle back
down to fairness.

~~~
mehwoot
But what could a homeowner do about it? If Zillow makes your house look a lot
less than what it's worth, so nobody wants to buy it for the proper price, you
can't do anything. That's exactly what this lawsuit is about.

They're not even suing for money right now, they just want the price for their
house fixed so they have a decent chance at selling it.

------
mr_tristan
You can find estimate calculators from various banks, realtors, etc. I just
did a basic google search and checked out estimates from Zillow, Chase, and
RE/MAX, and they range from 4% under my home price to 11% over. That's a
pretty crazy range of guesses.

My question is: why aren't these other home estimate calculators subject to
being sued, then?

(And when I checked out Zillow, I noticed there was a direct link to "I
disagree" next to the Zestimate. None of the other calculators had any kind of
feedback mechanism.)

Seems like the journalist here forgot to mention that home estimates are
pretty common and come from many different sources.

~~~
strictnein
The "I disagree" button is a lead gen for realtors, not for you to give them
feedback.

~~~
yellow_postit
Is there evidence they do zero tracking of clicks on that link for model
eval.? It seems much more likely it's a case of lead gen and feedback.

------
vacri
Here in Australia, underestimating by realty companies is the norm. I watched
a friend go through buying a house last year, and some houses were advertised
at prices that were below reserve [1]. As in, at auction, the bidding reached
the advertised price, but the buyer's floor price hadn't been reached yet, so
the house was not 'on the market' yet...

[1] In one case, 80k below reserve. You know you've hit the reserve price,
because in my state, the auctioneer is legally required to annouce the house
is 'now on the market'

~~~
chii
why don't they just say what the seller's floor price is, and start from
there? seems foolish to auction at a starting price that's lower!

~~~
vacri
Starting at the reserve can spook some bidders and make it hard to start the
auction. Starting below the reserve usually gets some momentum going in the
bidding, and that tends to carry over to a higher final price.

Advertising a price that's below the reserve is pretty unethical, though it's
not illegal (the seller is never locked into a price). People end up wasting
time and money (getting reports) for houses that were never actually in their
price range in the first place.

------
morganvachon
I've mentioned it before on HN, but Zillow is vastly overvaluing my home. I
paid $43k for it as a foreclosure in 2009. Today it appraises for about $60k
(it's a tiny farmhouse on a half acre lot), yet Zillow constantly values it at
over $80k. I believe they do this so they can bring up the average price for
the houses in my area. Maybe it's good for me, I don't know, but it's
dishonest.

------
whahjdjdj877
Our house is in the hottest part of Portland, OR, with double digit %
increases in the last couple years.

Last October when I refinanced, it was appraised at $455k. Zillow had it at
$467k-ish.

Not enough to bum me out because I also had a now former neighbor sell
recently. Buyers got into a bidding war and he walked off with $15k over
asking.

Seems accurate to me! ;)

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sibmike
Surely appraisals regulation is just another instance of mortgage regulations.
But is it not the over regulated mortgage market that blasted in 2008? Was it
because of zestimates? Nope? Well here ya go. Let the people speak their
opinion and work on their ML.

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intrasight
I would think that Zillow would mainly be punishing themselves by not having a
quality algo for home values, given that it the main draw of the site for many
people.

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noonespecial
Its ridiculous here in Florida because it doesn't understand "waterfront". You
may as well read tea leaves.

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scottshea
It would be great to see how Zillow stacks up to the desktop assessment
software used by various mortgage companies and banks.

~~~
cmiles74
Zillow's estimates are famously unreliable.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we-
live/wp/2014/06...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we-
live/wp/2014/06/10/how-accurate-is-zillows-zestimate-not-very-says-one-
washington-area-agent/?utm_term=.348539c6538e)

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mazamts
I don't understand how you can sue someone for estimating the price of a home.

Hopefully this gets thrown out

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libeclipse
Would be interesting to calculate

    
    
      P(actual_value_is_near_N | prediction_is_N).

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imjustsaying
If an algo could predict real estate prices (all of which are unique and based
on instantaneous human preferences) with 100% accuracy, any arbitrary human
thought would be known.

~~~
imjustsaying
A driveby downvote is not a valid argument to the contrary of my claim.

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inetknght
Someone fighting back against Silicon's Valley nonsensical idea of ignoring
laws?

This will totally end well! /s

~~~
bunkat
Zillow is a Seattle company, or are all tech companies just considered to be
part of Silicon Valley now?

