So you are thinking of selling your home, but wondering if you’ll make enough money for your effort to be worth it. That’s the first step in selling a home: determining your likely return on investment at the close of any deal.
And of course, a fast, easy way to gauge your home’s market value is to check its Zestimate.
What’s a Zestimate?
A Zestimate valuation is a proprietary Zillow tool for getting a free, instant estimate of a home’s market value. The Zestimate is calculated through a Zillow algorithm that crunches data from public property records, tax records, recent home sales in the area, and user-submitted information to come up with an approximate market value for a home.
The Zestimate takes into account:
- Home details like square footage, location and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
- On-market data such as listing price, description, comparable homes in the area and days on the market.
- Off-market data such as tax assessments, prior sales and other publicly available records
- Market trends, such as seasonal changes in demand.
A Zestimate is not an official appraisal, but it is a powerful tool for sizing up your home’s market value and planning your next move. Zillow publishes Zestimates for more than 104 million homes across the country. The Zestimate formula uses hundreds of data points for each home to come up with a number representing the likely selling price of that home.
How accurate is a Zestimate?
Zestimates are generally quite accurate. The median error rate for the Zestimate of U.S. houses on the market is just 1.9 percent. The median error rate for houses that are not on the market is higher, at 6.9 percent, but still close enough to do your preliminary planning.
A Zestimate’s accuracy depends on the data available in the geographic area around a home. Some counties and cities have detailed public information available about a home’s size, features, and age, while others do not. The more data that’s available to put into that formula, the more accurate the Zestimate will be. You can learn more specifics about the accuracy of the Zestimate in your market in this FAQ.
In major metro areas around the country, from Austin to Atlanta, and Cincinnati to San Diego, the Zestimate for on-market homes is within 20% of the actual selling price more than 99% of the time.
What if my Zestimate seems too high or too low?
The amount of data we have for your home and other homes in your area directly influences the Zestimate. So you can make your Zestimate more accurate by providing more information about your home. The first step to doing that is to claim your home and edit your home facts on Zillow. All that takes is entering your address on Zillow and taking a few steps to prove you’re the home’s legal owner.
From there, tell us more information about your home — like that you added a main bedroom, remodeled the kitchen or built a pool. Or you can correct inaccuracies — like telling us there are three full bathrooms instead of two in your home. The additional information will be included in your Zestimate, potentially making your home valuation more accurate. Because the more data we can put into the algorithm, the closer to the actual appraised value the Zestimate will be.
You’ll also want to check the sale dates for your home on Zillow to make sure they’re correct, as well as your property tax history. And consider letting your local tax assessor know about any home updates you’ve done. If there have been additions, updates or other work that your tax assessor doesn’t know about, they’re likely not reflected in your Zestimate, either.
Lastly, be aware that the Zestimate changes in response to market trends and even shifts in seasonal demand. If you see unexpected movement in your Zestimate, that could be the reason.
More questions about the Zestimate? Read a detailed FAQ about how it works.
Check out more helpful tools for sellers
Now that you know more about a Zestimate's accuracy, check out more free Zillow tools to help homeowners sell their homes smoothly.
Zillow’s Home Sale Proceeds Calculator can estimate how much profit you’ll make from selling your home. It takes into account the true costs of selling a home — like repairs and staging needed to help a house put on its best face for buyers, agent commission, and closing fees — to tell you how much it will cost to sell your home, and how much you’ll put in the bank when it’s all said and done.
Find an agent to guide you through the process of selling your home on Zillow’s directory of real estate experts. Hiring a savvy agent is one of the best moves you can make in selling your house. They know what’s going on in the local market, can point out home improvements that will increase your home’s value before you list, and help you market your home so you make as much money as possible from the sale. Simply put, an agent is your best friend when it’s time to sell your biggest investment.
