Trulia vs Zillow

[EvrClrx311]

Neighbors house just went on the market last week and is under contract for $440,500. Neither site seems to acknowledge that it was listed for sale, yet.

Trulia estimate - $404,000
Zillow estimate - $441,599

Just one example, but leads me to believe Zillow has better equations at play. At least for our area.


The thing both of these sites really miss on is upgrades and features. Two identical houses side by side could have same sq footage and proximity to 'stuff'... but if one has a deck, patio, gourmet kitchen and finished basement, it could easily sell for $100K more. However, on zillow/trulia they would be listed as identical prices.

[Semiretired2008]

A lot of people use them, but I have found errors across the board with values and the data collected by both of the systems.

For example: What Zillow shows for my house is not my house - it took a bit, but I figured out that it was a house on the other side of our housing area. Same with a friend of mines house in Colorado.

[Cat-tirement]

I have accounts on both Zillow and Trulia, and identified myself as owner of my house on both so I could enter details. Zillow gives me an estimated value of $198k while Trulia estimates $290k. OTOH, for my recently purchased future retirement home, Zillow says $278k while Trulia says $234k. Somewhat closer, but off in the opposite direction. (My actual purchase price last fall of the latter was higher than the Zillow estimate.) Are these estimates worth anything?

[frank2009]

This thread was an eye opener. Estimates for my house varied by 100K. These automated estimators have a ways to go before they can be even close to be trusted.

[braumeister]

I think the big problem with these sites is that a neighborhood has to be fairly homogeneous in order for them to do good comparisons.

I live in an extremely diverse area (my next door neighbor's house is easily worth 8X what mine is worth by anyone's measurement).

But even with that consideration, the Trulia and Zillow estimates for my house are only about 5% apart, and probably 25% lower than what I could actually get for it.

Their estimates for the aforesaid neighbor are about 40% apart, and way lower than what he could get for it. That shows what an outlier his house is (easily the most expensive place within 6-8 miles).

Happily, neither of us is likely to move in the near future.