Barrington Hills Real Estate Seller just got Zillowed!

We were sitting in our office looking over the recent sales for homes in the direct area for a Barrington Hills home that is one of the most up to date Barrington area homes we've seen in this price range.

In discussing our proposed purchase price to start off with, the potential buyer pulled out some papers they had printed out from the online home valuation report from Zillow. Zillow reports occasionally come up when we represent real estate buyers and sellers and often times we have to explain why their information is off...especially when it comes to Barrington area real estate.

Zillow is nothing new and there has been quite some debate on the accuracy of these online home valuations. Some reports and information provided by the staff at Zillow have even admitted to being 7% off on average which can be quite a significant amount for Barrington Hills real estate when you are talking about homes that can easily reach well over a million dollars. Keep in mind that the 7% error reports is for real estate in general but when you use it for Barrington area real estate, we've found several cases where it is much farther off then 7% and this is due to the uniqueness of Barrington real estate.

As indicated on the Zillow website, the online Zestimates are for a starting reference only and are not meant to replace using a competant Barrington real estate agent. Zillows business plan (or so it has been told) is to generate income off of advertising and not selling real estate.

One thing that Zillow cannot do at this point of time is calculate adjustments for properties that have been updated to modern standards and I don't see how this would ever be possible since each Barrington home has differant looks, smells, etc.. that just can't be captured online. If it could, Barrington real estate agents would already be replaced by online services.

I could show you one report from Zillow (or any other online Barrington Home Valuation service) for Jewel Park Real Estate values in Barrington Village that are completely way off... especially when one of the comparable homes that recently sold for over $500,000 was torn down right after being purchased. (In other words, the Barrington Village Real Estate buyers basically paid over $500,000 for a lot that is less then an acre in size.)

For savvier Barington real estate buyers or sellers, they understand this and luckily this potential Barrington area real estate buyer fits in that category and understands that all of the updates for this particular Barrington Hills home can in no possible way be calculated online without actually viewing the Barrington real estate for sale. Barrington area real estate is very unique in character and while this particular service has some pretty cool tools, Barrington real estate is just too unique in character for an online real estate service to guestimate an accurate number.

While it is easy to explain why some of their valuations (especially for Barrington Real Estate) there is still a perception that is in the back of a users mind that can have an effect on decision making. In some cases, it could be good for a Barrington real estate seller or bad.

In this situation, it's not good for the Barrington Hills Real Estate seller because when we did another check, it appears from the Zillow report that this home has been viewed and valued over 60 times since this Barrington Hills home has been listed which is a pretty significant number for only a couple of months time.

Obviously this particular Barrington Hills home is generating quite a bit of attention and it rightly should. However, I would bet that many of the 60 users that have used Zillow in their valuation of this home feel the home is overpriced.

Remember though... real estate is completely unique in character and no two lots that a home sits on are identical.

A key part in this tool is that it did show Barrington area real estate going up in price for the past couple of months, up a percentage point or two which is great since there are so many negative headlines concerning real estate by the media. The infomation for the Barrington real estate trends I'm going to assume is coming from public title transfer records that shows the price of recently purchased real estate in the Barrington area.

While our Barrington Hills Real Estate buyer completely understands this, it was still funny to hear them say "Tell the Seller They Just Got Zillowed!"

Date: Saturday, June, 30th 2007 @ 05:59:26 PM
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