Zillow absolutely misleads people. They are hugely inaccurate, as one might expect of an automated process. DW runs into this all the time, it’s a constant education process to get people to look past it.
There are weasel words if you click on the help button and read some stuff, but how many people do that?
Zillow currently has my house at least $50K too high. Better than too low I guess, unless I tried to sell based on the zillow estimate. Zillow provides a range now, and I think their value for my house is within the range, but since the range is almost $100K that’s not saying much.
Yes, their Zestimate is a joke. They also list every deeded transfer as a “sale” - so the house we bought was “sold” 4 times in the past ten years without any change in ownership. Nevermind that those were transfers to community property, to a trust, then to another trust…
I don’t think the lawsuit has a leg to stand on. If the plaintiffs won any kind of judgement, then all County Assessors are in for a big problem. To calculate the value of a home for property taxes, Assessors use the same complex comparable sale algorithms. These algorithms cannot take into account condition of property, specific location of property in a pocket neighborhood, finishes and/or remodel value, etc. Most importantly in my neighborhood, there is a HUGE value difference between ocean view properties and an exact same property across the street without any view. Also, in older neighborhoods, there’s no such thing as a similar 3/2 2000 sq ft house. They are all vastly different and custom built and/or original condition.
In my neighborhood, Zillow estimates (or Redfin or Trulia) are always erroneous. As a Seller, my biggest issue is when buyers look through the Internet and come back stating ‘Redfin says the property is only worth X, that’s why our offer is X’.
But the county assessors, at least in our county, do make adjustment for property condition (on the scale up to 10) and anything that makes it stand out of the crowd… Everyone knows that assessment is not an appraisal. The Zillows etc. create the impression for the home owners that their estimates are akin the number that a realtor would recommend for setting the sale price (not appraisal or assessment) - and that is not really the case.
This isn’t true in my town. The assessors have floor plans, will do drive-bys, in-person inspections, adjust for location, renovations, condition, landscaping, etc. By law the tax assessment is supposed to be at 100% of market value.
One the “rewards” of remodeling your kitchen is a higher property tax bill.
Since I live in California (no annual re-assessment, no staff involved in field visits for assessing the value of property), I cannot imagine that small entities in other states have the staff to drive around and assess each property. Do they enter your property every 3-4 years? Big undertaking, but I guess some areas have the staff and knowledge to do a somewhat accurate value assessment.
My county does it annually!! Yup. New photos of the property get posted every year. Me thinks we pay too much in tax for them to be able to keep the staff to do this. The county to the north where we used to live does reassessment every 4 years, and an assessor comes out and measures everything.
In MA everything is town-by-town, and we have 351 cities and towns.
In my town there are (IIRC) four employees in the assessor’s office, and about 4500 houses in town. They use the previous year’s sales history to set values for the current year, so they run a year behind.
They don’t physically inspect the inside every year, but over several years they will try to hit every house. And they track building permits, so after your building permit is signed off you can expect an in-house visit.
Yikes! No inside inspections here. Just assessors poking outside of the house… yup… still standing. Yup… the dog still has teeth… Gotta go plug those numbers in!
Inside inspections here every somoften too. Not every time…they do give notice…but also don’t give a specific time. Apparently if you aren’t home when they come…they guess. We’ve been told they were inspecting our house indoors, but never has it happened…because we both worked…or something.
Before 1980 or so (before Prop 13), County appraisers came out and did the field assessments. When I go in to pull historical permits and/or the county assessment records, every one of the cards show dates visited with “Access Denied” to entry into the house. with people working and home security issues nowadays, I cannot imagine who would let a stranger into their house to poke around, if you were even home.
Just loaded the final photos of the finished deckc.
Today we finished, cleaned up and hauled everything out of their house. Next Wednesday my carpenter is going to finish the fireplace tile and that should be it. The deck doesn’t really look finished because the young owners want to put in steel cable through the railing and add some type of canvas on the roof. But all the structure is there.
We went over schedule by 2 days and cost by about $2,500 because they added the stained wide railings and they wanted the raised roof design to keep their gutters intact.
