Real Estate News | Real Estate Investing | Stock Market Investing | Passive Income | Flipping | 1031 Exchange | Private Lendi

Home prices have been rising so fast that comps have become wildly unreliable. That’s making it difficult for sellers to set accurate listing prices, and for buyers to get homes appraised for what lenders are willing to loan. Home valuation tools like Zillow’s Zestimate and others are also struggling with a volatile pricing environment, and are often off by an insanely high amount. In a report by Inman, realtor Tim Collom in Sacramento, California, said that estimated home values by companies like Zillow and Redfin are “always” off, and it’s getting worse. He says: “They’re not off by $10,000. They’re off by like $100,000 to $200,000.” If you go by percentages, he says they can off by as much as 10%, and that even experienced real estate agents are having a difficult time keeping up with the trends in home prices right now. Tools like the Zestimate are automatic valuation models or AVMs so they rely on software to automatically update figures. There’s been a lot of criticism about these tools, but Zillow defe