Slashdot Mirror
Zillow Faces Lawsuit Over 'Zestimate' Tool That Calculates a House's Worth (washingtonpost.com)
According to The Washington Post, "a homeowner has filed suit against online reality giant Zillow, claiming the company's controversial 'Zestimate' tool repeatedly undervalued her house, creating a 'tremendous road block' to its sale." From the report: The suit, which may be the first of its kind, was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by a Glenview, Ill., real estate lawyer, Barbara Andersen. The suit alleges that despite Zillow's denial that Zestimates constitute "appraisals," the fact that they offer market-value estimates and "are promoted as a tool for potential buyers to use in assessing [the] market value of a given property," shows that they meet the definition of an appraisal under state law. Not only should Zillow be licensed to perform appraisals before offering such estimates, the suit argues, but it also should obtain "the consent of the homeowner" before posting them online for everyone to see. In an interview, Andersen told me she is considering bringing the issue to the Illinois attorney general because it affects all property owners in the state. She has also been approached about turning the matter into a class action, which could touch millions of owners across the country. In the suit, Andersen said that she has been trying to sell her townhouse, which overlooks a golf course and is in a prime location, for $626,000 -- roughly what she paid for it in 2009. Houses directly across the street but with greater square footage sell for $100,000 more, according to her court filing. But Zillow's automated valuation system has apparently used sales of newly constructed houses from a different and less costly part of town as comparables in valuing her townhouse, she says. The most recent Zestimate is for $562,000. Andersen is seeking an injunction against Zillow and wants the company to either remove her Zestimate or amend it. For the time being, she is not seeking monetary damages, she told me.
To fix this, "take ownership" of your property on Zillow and edit the property details and add an extra 1,000 sqft to it. Magically your value will go up. Thats what I did 5 years ago!
Okay, so they suck. Should they be censored over it? Because this is what is being demanded.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A roommate and I rented the front unit of a triplex in Silicon Valley after the dot com bust. I had planted some petunias in the front yard, got busy with life, and let the petunias die. While we were out in front one day, a little old lady came up to tell us that the dead petunias in our front yard lowered the value of her house down the street by $25K. I asked her if she was selling her house. She said no. I asked her how she knew that the value of her house dropped by $25K if it wasn't up for sale. She walked away in a huff.
The "luxury" apartments in my immediate area have a 50% vacancy rate in San Jose. The last time this happened was after the dot com bust and the Great Recession. The apartment bubble might be easing as new apartments and condos are coming online. Or maybe Silicon Valley is slowing down.
The argument is a Zestimate is a type of appraisal. And appraisals have legal requirements that must be met.
That's a rather odd argument. No one looks at the house, or goes inside. the neighbor posting on Facebook that they think the house should be valued less would be as equal a lawsuit target.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or maybe all the cigarette and pot smokers moved out because federal law applies to the apartment complex and smokers have to go outside the gates to smoke.
There is no such law. An apartment manager might tell you that just to get you to cooperate, but there's no actual law requiring that. However, as per the Fair Housing Act, if one tenant has breathing problems and another nearby tenant smokes, they can force the smoking tenant to move to another unit and/or move out of the complex entirely. If the landlord doesn't comply and doesn't forcibly move that tenant, they can get sued.
The apartment I used to live in had rules requiring that all smoking happen off premises, which was just their own bylaw that you had to agree to when you signed your lease. However, the one I live at now doesn't; they just have to be in certain designated areas.
No matter what though, in the event of any kind of dispute, the law (rightfully, IMO) tends to discriminate against the smoker's civil rights if they conflict with that of a nonsmoker's civil rights.
There's also insurance issues.
Apartments that totally ban smoking get discounts on it, since they've banned a major source of fires.
Smoking bans are generally market based, not law based.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
And what exactly led you to believe the claims that Zestimate is an appraisal? And besides, the header here says "Nobody believes the Zestimates", so what is the problem?
Oh, perhaps it could be THE FUCKING DEFINITION OF "APPRAISAL"!?!?!
2. an estimate of value, as for sale, assessment, or taxation; valuation.
Sheesh.
Comparables are always up for debate.
We went through this financing a remodel for our house in 2003. The original appraisal was flawed in our opinion because while the structures were comparable, they all lacked the location feature of our house -- no rear neighbors, and adjacent to a 50 acre wooded lake.
The appraiser admitted that his comps were flawed -- there 4 other lakes in the city were larger, and all the homes on those lakes were mansions worth millions, so they wouldn't work as comps, and there were too few recent home sales on our lake for comparison.
The lender eventually got the appraiser to work harder at finding similar structures with scenic natural overlooks and we gained meaningful increases in appraisal. Fortunately for us, the lender would have lost the loan without the appraisal change, so they had an incentive to pressure the appraiser and accept it in underwriting.
People in suburban subdivisions are kind of fucked on appraisals, as there's little differentiation. Their house really is worth what any 4 recent sales in the same area are worth because the homes and settings are nearly all alike.
But people with unusual geographic features are also kind of fucked unless they insist that those unique features be accounted for.