Pronounced

ZEST-ti-met

The Zestimate home value is Zillow’s estimated market value for an individual home and is calculated for about 100 million homes nationwide. It is a starting point in determining a home’s value and is not an official appraisal. The Zestimate is automatically computed three times per week based on millions of public and user-submitted data points. User-submitted updates to home facts will be updated in the Zestimate immediately. Read more

What is a Zestimate?

The Zestimate home valuation is Zillow’s estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. It is not an appraisal. It is a starting point in determining a home’s value. The Zestimate is calculated from public and user submitted data; your real estate agent or appraiser physically inspects the home and takes special features, location, and market conditions into account. We encourage buyers, sellers, and homeowners to supplement Zillow’s information by doing other research such as:

• Getting a comparative market analysis (CMA) from a real estate agent
• Getting an appraisal from a professional appraiser
• Visiting the house (whenever possible)

Zillow also produces a Zestimate forecast, which is Zillows prediction of a homes Zestimate one year from now, based on current home and market information. Learn more about the Zestimate forecast .

Zillow also provides a Rent Zestimate estimated monthly rental price. Learn more about the Rent Zestimate .

FAQs

How do we come up with the Zestimate and what’s in the formula?

We use proprietary automated valuation models that apply advanced algorithms to analyze our data to identify relationships within a specific geographic area, between this home-related data and actual sales prices. Home characteristics, such as square footage, location or the number of bathrooms, are given different weights according to their influence on home sale prices in each specific geography over a specific period of time, resulting in a set of valuation rules, or models that are applied to generate each home’s Zestimate. Specifically, some of the data we use in this algorithm include:

Physical attributes: Location, lot size, square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms and many other details.

Tax assessments: Property tax information, actual property taxes paid, exceptions to tax assessments and other information provided in the tax assessors’ records.

Prior and current transactions: Actual sale prices over time of the home itself and comparable recent sales of nearby homes

Currently, we have data on 110 million homes and Zestimates and Rent Zestimates on approximately 100 million U.S. homes. (Source: Zillow Internal, March 2013)

Why do I see home values for the past?