We know you’ve heard of the Zestimates or Trulia Estimates. How could you not be tempted to pull instant reports on your home? Were also guessing youve pulled a report on a neighbors or friends home more than once.
For a quick snapshot of home prices, these online tools are great!
But for families looking to buy or sell, Zillow and Trulia recently made drastic changes to their systems that impact the information consumers gather about listings on the sites. While the accuracy of their home values has never been applicable to real time market rates*, these changes completely undermine the use of the websites for searching live listings.
First, you need to know that Zillow acquired Trulia in February of 2015.
Traditionally both Trulia and Zillow automatically uploaded listings to their site through an agreement with ListHub. No more. As of April, both sites terminated their relationship with ListHub.
Instead, Zillow is launching its own listing service designed called Data Dashboard to feed listings into both sites. The long-term vision of this service is to directly connect to different MLS providers. Right now the effectiveness hinges on individual broker participation.
The result? Thousands of active listings havent migrated over to Zillow and Trulia.
In the short term, this further impacts the accuracy* of home prices. Prior to the change, while the typical home wouldnt reflect accurate numbers, at least they showed all the listed homes with correct values. Now there are less active listings on the sites.
*According to their site, Zillows national median error rate is 8% half of the time. This means that the price listed is within 8% above or below the actual value, a 16% range overall 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, the home value prices are more than 8% off. Trulia isnt as transparent about their accuracy as Zillow, but has historically pulled data from many of the same places as Zillow. With the acquisition, we can assume Trulias data will mirror the accuracy of Zillow moving forward.
ParkLife Adjustments
Not all realtors are aware of the changes to the sites. We caught the changes early on in the process. To ensure all of our listed properties are accurately represented on the sites, we put team members in place to manually upload listings.
The news has been slowly spreading across the real estate community, which is increasing the percentage of live listings on the sites. The realtor community has been hesitant to adopt into Data Dashboard, particularly due to high listing fees. Negotiations between realtor associations and the sites have started, but no one can say for sure what will come from them.
Until then, the accuracy of the listings on these sites depends on each individual agent and if they manually upload their listings or opt into Data Dashboard.
Impact for the Real Estate Market
Consumers will feel the biggest impact. Particularly sellers who forgo utilizing a realtor, this will limit the visibility of their home.
Additionally, buyers leveraging the site to look for properties will limit their options. Buyers can also potentially send themselves on a fools errand chasing down a home they found as listed on one of the two sites but actually already sold.
With these changes there is no guarantee that all the homes currently for sale are being added to their listing, or are being removed, in a timely manner as they sell.
Where to Go to For Accurate Information
If you are actively searching for a new home, utilizing sites pulling data from the MLS is the only way to ensure you dont miss out on homes on the market.
At ParkLife, our listing search tool pulls directly from the MLS. Most reputable realtors will have this feature on their sites as well.
For sellers, work with a realtor to pull accurate comps for your region. As mentioned above, the home values on Zillow and Trulia pale in compassion to real home values. One of the most important things you can do to position your home for selling is to list it at a competitive and accurate price. Not doing so could drastically undermine your efforts to sell your home.
Zillow and Trulia in Coronado
Coronados market differs from almost anywhere else in the nation. The unique appeal of homes, proximity to the beach, ability to expand and distinctive architecture of homes can never truly be reflected in an online site that scrubs dated property records.
How can an online site understand the potential associated with a bigger home lot over a smaller lot with updated appliances? Or that an 800 square foot tear down by the beach can be worth $4 million?
Bottom line, it cant.
And without the current listing and recently sold values being automatically pulled into their system, the accuracy of both Zillow and Trulia will continue to fall farther and farther from current rates.
So if you are looking to buy or sell in Coronado, its even more crucial to partner with a local realtor who knows the Coronado market inside and out. We are proud to say that all of our agents at ParkLife fit that description. They will give you the competitive edge to both buying and selling on the island. Contact one today!
