Zillow versus P.T. Barnum
Posted by John Lockwood on November 13th, 2006
P.T. Barnum was said to have remarked, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. As it turns out, however, P.T. Barnum never said that — it was a competitor of Barnum who said it, David Hannum. Nevertheless, I was amused recently when I came across a home listed in the MLS at $329,000, to see this pathological little tidbit in the agent only remarks: “Zillow says $369,000!”
If you follow real estate blogs at all, you’re probably familiar with Zillow, the computerized home pricing service with the brain dead algorithm that’s famous primarily for making Realtors’® jobs more difficult by telling buyers and sellers the wrong prices. What’s amusing to me in seeing a colleague quoting Zillow in an MLS field meant for other agents are the many possibilities that are afoot in this case, including:
1) The agent doesn’t know that Zillow is brain dead.
2) The agent does know Zillow is brain dead, but is hoping his colleagues won’t.
3) The agent’s seller insists Zillow isn’t brain dead, so out of deference to his wishes he’s passing along the Zidiocy — oh sorry, I meant Zestimate — on to his colleagues.
Hopefully choice #1 is not the case, that there’s honestly an agent out there quoting Zillow and scratching his head about why the home’s not selling yet when it’s so “underpriced.” This is a home down the hill, people, not one of our difficult to appraise properties on acreage that we have out here. I knew how to correctly evaluate the worth of such a property in about the first week on the job, and I could probably come up with a better estimate than Zillow for such a property in my first month.
One wonders for whose words David Hannum’s observation would be most apt, the careless agent? His colleagues? The seller?