David Barr's Sarasota and Venice Real Estate Blog

I've been saying that Zillow is a problem in the real estate business for years.  There's two reasons for this: 1) They publish inaccurate data, that the public thinks is accurate; 2) They give a platform for online exposure to Realtors who have no idea how to market themselves, so how can they market your home for sale? A recent article by the Seattle Times on January 20, 2019 ( read here ), reports that the median Zillow Zestimate has a 4.5 % error rate nationally.   That's $22,500 on a $500,000 home. Just say no to Zillow Zillow is not a licensed real estate broker in most states.  It makes it's money from agents who pay to have their head shot on their site, because it gets a lot of traffic.  Zillow does not have to follow real estate law or conform to the Realtor Code of Ethics or MLS listing rules.  If they did, they could not leave off the market or sold properties on their site, to make it appear they have as many listings are Realtor....

Zillow is starting a new "feature" that allows agents to post what we in the industry call pocket listings:  Properties that are supposedly for sale before they are listed in the MLS. Pocket listings are prevalent in some markets, and no doubt a lot of buyers see agents negotiating pocket listings on popular real estate TV shows on Bravo or HGTV. Unfortunately for consumers, pocket listings are full of potential legal and accuracy issues that will add more headaches than necessary to the home buying process. The MLS I belong to, Mid Florida MLS, the 2nd largest in the country, requires that a property must be listed in the MLS within 48 hours of receipt of a signed listing agreement by the seller.  Zillow's "Coming Soon" will not be much of a benefit. Zillow's "Coming Soon" feature opens up a lot of opportunity for agents to abuse it.  In the absence of a signed listing agreement, agents could post a property for sale without a signed list...

Woo hoo! I got an email today from Trulia to let me know my profile on their site ranks in the top 1% of agents nationwide, for views by real estate consumers. I'm not a big fan of Trulia and it's major competitor, Zillow.  In fact, I think these two sites do more to damage the real estate business than anything Congress or a bad economy have done.  Why?   Read more here. However, these two sites do receive a lot of traffic, and offer free exposure for me to promote my brand and my online presence, including my website and this blog.  I consider it one of my missions as a Realtor to help consumers who post questions on Trulia's forum, understand why so many of their "listings" are not available for sale, and why so many of their property value estimates are flat out wrong.

Last year I created a page on my website about Zillow's misleading and unreliable data about Sarasota real estate. As I wait for the football games to start, I thought it might be a good time to get updated information from my friends at Zillow, who love to misinform real estate buyers about price trends in our fair hamlet. Zillow reported an 18% decline in real estate sales prices for Sarasota in 2011 versus 2010.  MLS data showed the median sales price was flat in 2011, the sign of a market that had hit bottom. Zillow's data for 2012 is even more perplexing.  They reported the median sales price in 2011 was $130,000.  They now report a 2012 median sales price of $220,000, a whopping 74 % increase over 2011. Wow.  I wish that was the truth.  Even so, 2012 was a nice recovery for our area, with MLS data showing the median sales price in Sarasota County was $155,000 versus $135,000 2011. Can you really trust such wildly fluctuating data from Zillow? ...