Zillow Group is now using its popular home valuation tool Zestimate to make cash offers on homes. It’s part of the company’s drive to become a central hub for people looking to sell their homes.
This feature is available for eligible homes in 20 markets sold through Zillow Offers, the “iBuyer” home buying and selling service.
Zestimate analyzes various data from public registers and uses AI to establish a price. It has improved over the years and now has a median error rate for homes on the market of 1.9%.
We are now a small, but important step closer to achieving the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG) that we set for ourselves 15 years ago, to put a real price on every roof and enable home buyers. to fly over neighborhoods by magic and see these prices. .
– Rich Barton (@Rich_Barton) 25 février 2021
Zillow launched Zestimate in 2006. It was the first time homeowners had access to appraised home values - data previously only available to realtors, appraisers, and mortgage lenders.
Some have criticized the tool over the years. A group of Illinois homeowners sued Zillow in 2017, alleging that the Zestimate tool is often inaccurate and difficult to change, and that Zillow markets it as roughly equivalent to a valuation. Homeowners argued that the tool undervalued their home and made it more difficult for them to sell. A federal appeals court sided with Zillow in the lawsuit.
Zillow CEO Rich Barton called Zestimate “very provocative and personal and a bit voyeuristic” in an interview with. 2016 discussing how the company designed the tool.
Zillow uses its growing service of Zillow offerings as part of the company’s new focus on the end-to-end home buying and selling experience. Zillow halted Zillow offerings at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, but the company is now active in all 25 markets.
The company is reorganizing its structure to focus more on a client’s overall needs – they may need an agent, then a mortgage, then a Zillow Deals offer to sell their home, for example.
Barton alluded to the “bundled transparent deal” when calling the company’s fourth quarter results with analysts last week.
“The world is just one click away – why not real estate? This is where we are heading, ”Barton said. “The fact that we’ve invested in each of these ancillary services and can now start putting them together in a way that a lot of people who provide point solutions can’t or struggle – that’s a big strategic bet. “
Barton added, “We’re really excited by the first signals we’re seeing in an integrated bundle. It just makes so much sense. ”
Zillow beat analysts’ estimates for its fourth quarter results last week. The company benefits from a strong US real estate market which gained nearly $ 2.5 trillion last year, the most since 2005, according to a Zillow analysis.
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