Zestimates Improve

In response to complaints that its estimates gave homeowners unrealistic expectations, Zillow, an online real estate marketplace and creator of the Zestimate, conducted a competition to improve its accuracy. Almost 4,000 teams of data scientists and engineers in 91 countries participated. The winner was announced in January.
When Zillow launched the Zestimate in 2006, its margin of error for home price estimates was about 14% nationally, says Skylar Olsen, director of economic research at Zillow. That improved to 4.5% by early 2019, she says. As the winning improvements are made this year, the margin of error will fall below 4% nationally, says Olsen. That means half of Zestimates will be within 4% of the actual sale price of homes, and half will be outside that margin of error, says Olsen.
Even with the improvements, Zillow says, homeowners should supplement the Zestimate with a comparative market analysis from real estate agents or a professional appraisal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

34 Trends That Will Define Home Design In 2020

Image
Kitchens 1. Three-tone kitchens.  Two-tone kitchen cabinets — meaning the upper cabinets are one color and the lower cabinets another color, or the perimeter cabinets are one color and the island is a different color — dominated kitchens in the past couple of years. So it’s only natural that designers are building on the trend rather than doing away with it. In a three-tone kitchen, one more color or material is introduced to create an asymmetry in the palette that helps define zones or functions and keeps the eye moving. Here, designer Janina Cabrera of  J Style at Home  designed a gorgeous kitchen with white perimeter cabinets, a light wood island base and a knockout powder-blue hutch. In this kitchen by  Hutker Architects , a deep navy defines the refrigerator and pantry wall to the left, joining white perimeter cabinets and a superlight wood island base. Wood via the beams, ceiling, shelves and flooring adds to the diverse three-tone palette. ...
Read more

10 Things You Should Buy Now To Get Through COVID-19 Cabin Fever This Winter

  1. Outdoor gear Dave Labbe , senior vice president at Kittery Trading Post, saw record sales this summer of items like kayaks, camping gear, and bicycles. He expects the trend to continue for the winter. "Our anticipation is that all winter categories will see the same trend," he says. "Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skies, snowboarding, and winter camping and hiking will boom as people continue to participate in anything outdoor-related." And outdoor activities aren't just for weekends, either. Kids who are still learning from home will need outdoor breaks. Store inventories of  backyard ice rink kits ,  backyard snowboards , skates, sleds, and snowman kits may melt away quickly. 2. Outdoor clothing Coats, hats, and mittens are popular every winter season, but this year you might have trouble finding what you want as more people brave the cold and snow to fend off cabin fever. "People want to continue spending time together safely this winte...
Read more

Black Homeownership Plunges To Record Low

The homeownership rate of black Americans hit an all-time low in the first quarter of this year as black communities continue struggling to recover financially from the housing crisis a decade ago, recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows. The black homeownership rate has dropped 8.6 percentage points since peaking in 2004. “We can see that discrimination is still there, although it has changed its form,” Michela Zonta, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, told  The Wall Street Journal . Zonta released a study this week that found higher-income black homeowners are more likely to purchase homes in predominantly minority neighborhood, which have mostly failed to see home values rise since the foreclosure crisis. In comparison, neighborhoods with predominantly white borrowers have seen homes appreciate 3% between 2006 to 2017, while homes in predominantly black neighborhoods tended to be worth 6% less than they were in 2006, according to Zonta’s study. ...
Read more