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So the Redfin and Zillow price of my house I purchased in Oct. 2015 is off about 125K from my purchase price (1.125M) and misses the 400K in remodel. I checked

So the Redfin and Zillow price of my house I purchased in Oct. 2015 is off about 125K from my purchase price (1.125M) and misses the 400K in remodel. I checked the houses on the same street that sold since and they are off by 200-400K from the ASP. To be fair I live in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley and the housing prices are crazy stupid. Anywhere else in the US the house would be 400-500K.

ralusek 10y ago
Maybe anywhere else in California. A house that is 1.125M in SV right now goes for about 150-200k in many parts of the US.
- douche 10y ago
  I wish I could pick up properties that my parents own in western Maine and drop them in seacoast New Hampshire. A town house that might scrape 80k up there would be worth 300-400k down here, assuming it was a barely livable shithole.
  - chrisan 10y ago
    Technically that 80k "livable shithole" is still an 80k "livable shithole" and the remaining 320k is the value of land/location :)
    - douche 10y ago
      Totally. Being within 50 miles of places that actually have jobs helps too. I've seen condemned, complete teardowns in this area selling for more than 250k
cwilkes 10y ago
Or you could have the situation a couple of blocks from me: 1920s remodel that was awesome in the inside sold for $850k. Crappy 1940s house with one owner for 40 years (and it shows) is Zestimated to be the same price as they have the same stats in square footage and bathrooms. They are listing for a reasonable $575k. Zestimates are a complete joke. They can complain that they don't have all the facts (but they can infer from the wording of "needs work" and "recently remodeled") but that's like if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass a hopin. What I don't get is that they have the data on millions of sales. Surely they can come up with something that's not 30% off. At that rate you minus well just guess at a price and be better off.
- marmshallow 10y ago
  > minus well I think you mean "might as well". I'm sure that Zillow has poured tremendous resources into one of their flagship features on the site and their model certainly takes into account all features you are thinking of.
- gwbas1c 10y ago
  Because a more accurate estimate of value requires well-formed data. They would need a good way to judge condition and other characteristics that might require a very subtle interpretation of a listing, or might require an in-person visit to a property. These kinds of judgements are much more complicated than traditional machine learning. My guess is that they are feeding easily-obtained data into a machine learning algorithm, and quality of property, interpretation of a listing, and viewing of pictures, is not something that's easy to feed into a machine learning algorithm.

ralusek 10y ago

Maybe anywhere else in California. A house that is 1.125M in SV right now goes for about 150-200k in many parts of the US.

douche 10y ago
I wish I could pick up properties that my parents own in western Maine and drop them in seacoast New Hampshire. A town house that might scrape 80k up there would be worth 300-400k down here, assuming it was a barely livable shithole.
- chrisan 10y ago
  Technically that 80k "livable shithole" is still an 80k "livable shithole" and the remaining 320k is the value of land/location :)
  - douche 10y ago
    Totally. Being within 50 miles of places that actually have jobs helps too. I've seen condemned, complete teardowns in this area selling for more than 250k

cwilkes 10y ago

Or you could have the situation a couple of blocks from me: 1920s remodel that was awesome in the inside sold for $850k. Crappy 1940s house with one owner for 40 years (and it shows) is Zestimated to be the same price as they have the same stats in square footage and bathrooms. They are listing for a reasonable $575k. Zestimates are a complete joke. They can complain that they don't have all the facts (but they can infer from the wording of "needs work" and "recently remodeled") but that's like if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass a hopin. What I don't get is that they have the data on millions of sales. Surely they can come up with something that's not 30% off. At that rate you minus well just guess at a price and be better off.

marmshallow 10y ago
> minus well I think you mean "might as well". I'm sure that Zillow has poured tremendous resources into one of their flagship features on the site and their model certainly takes into account all features you are thinking of.
gwbas1c 10y ago
Because a more accurate estimate of value requires well-formed data. They would need a good way to judge condition and other characteristics that might require a very subtle interpretation of a listing, or might require an in-person visit to a property. These kinds of judgements are much more complicated than traditional machine learning. My guess is that they are feeding easily-obtained data into a machine learning algorithm, and quality of property, interpretation of a listing, and viewing of pictures, is not something that's easy to feed into a machine learning algorithm.