On their website Zillow makes the following claim, In Big Print at the top of the page
Free, Instant Valuations and Data for 67,000,000+ Homes
A little further down the page Zillow tells us why we should use them
Why Use Zillow
>Buyers: Compare values to avoid overpaying
>Sellers: Use our tools to help set a price
>Owners: Track your most important asset
That seems like a simple, straightforward and unambiguous claim.
But a lot has been written about the claims that Zillow makes, and much of it has called the accuracy of those claims into question. I did a post about it back in August new ways to value your home, and your neighbors and I netted out by saying ...I think that at this point these are interesting, innovative services that are fun to play around with, and that may be useful in providing a broad value range. But I also think that Zillow and Reply should back off on the claims they each make on their homepages...or at the very least provide a big warning on the homepage that advises people that these valuations cannot be counted on to be accurate - Do Not make financial decisions based on them. It's too important.
And now, from RealtyTimes via Yahoo
Zillow Gets FTCillowed
...the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC,) which has just filed a consumer protection complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that "Internet financial services and real estate provider Zillow.com is misleading consumers, real estate professionals and financial service providers in on-line home valuations."
Zillow responds, "We believe these allegations are groundless. As we say consistently and prominently on our Web site, Zillow is a free research tool for consumers, and Zestimates are designed to be a starting point for consumers who want to learn about the value of homes. We make every effort to explain on our site the role of Zestimates as a research tool, as well as to clearly display our rates of accuracy for every area we cover."
I have an awfully hard time with the '....As we say consistently and prominently on our Web site, Zillow is a free research tool for consumers, and Zestimates are designed to be a starting point for consumers...'
The way I read it, all the prominent stuff on Zillow tells the consumer that Zillow is the place to get a valuation on your home or on the home that you would like to buy. Period. I can't find anything prominent that even hints at this kind of explanation or disclaimer anywhere on Zillows homepage. And to my mind the homepage would be an awfully good place to start to say this consistently and a prominent place to say it prominently, if one really wanted people to have this information. Check it out and tell me if I've missed something, Zillow.com. Then I clicked on the next logical place for a Buyer, Seller, or Owner to go from the homepage >Buyers: Compare values to avoid overpaying >Sellers: Use our tools to help set a price >Owners: Track your most important asset. And still no prominent or consistent explanation or disclaimer that Zillow is designed to be a starting point, etc, etc. Nothing, Zip, Zero, Zilch. Under Buyers and Sellers I did find these explanations and instructions> Compare the home's estimated value to the asking price. Take the Zestimate with you to open houses. Review comps of nearby homes to arrive at a fair selling price. See what your agent sees. Enter your address to get an idea of what your home is worth. Look at the current estimated market value and other data about your home. Find out how your home stacks up compared to others in your ZIP code.
So, making believe that I was a Buyer or Seller or Owner, I entered a few different addresses of homes in Tucson to get a zestimate. As usual these zestimates were pretty far off real world values, but that aside, I still did not find a prominent disclaimer or explanation. So far, I didn't find any disclaimer or explanation of any kind, prominent or not. Now there are dozens of links in teeny little fonts on the bottom of each page, and elsewhere, and I'll bet the starting point disclaimer is in one of those. But I didn't go clicking through each of them to find it, because they're teeny, not prominent. And the only thing that's consistent is the lack of a prominent disclosure. And that's the problem.
