Pushing Dirt

Straying to the residential world today…it’s so much more fun over there. Try punching “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” into Zillow.com’s property value estimator.

You’ll find the market value of this 16 bedroom 35 bath home totaling 55,000 square feet on 18 acres.

Apparently the housing market has taken a bit of a hit on the nation’s first house. Zillow figures the White House’s value fell from $389 million in the peak of the market to a measly $295 million today. Zillow figures on a $1.4 million mortgage payment.

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Zillow claims it can value your house. Americans love this as we are obsessed with the value of everything. Thus the success of antique roadshow.

In washington dc they brag they have some of their best data, managing to come up within 20% of your ultimate price 84% of the time and within 10% about 65% of the time.

how good is that? In my neighborhood, a typical house sells for $800,000. They are talking about a swing of $320,000 and $160,000 in the two cases. I bet I could do that well just without any kind of fancy algorithm or magic eight ball.

Another example of a couple of tech guys with NO real estate experience pushing a tool of zero value on an unsophisticated public. Zillow’s a novelty site. If you need solid real estate information, look elzewhere.