Should you bet your wallet on Zillow or other online valuation?

What is your property worth?  Is the zillow value on your property accurate? I’ve always wondered how accurate Zillow/Trulia/realtor.com, etc… actually are. Especially because wheenever I ask a borrower what their property is worth, more often than not they respond: “The Zillow value is X.” This got me thinking: Should you rely on one of the realty sites to make financial decision? (Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, etc.) at valuing a property?

As a private lender I was interested to see how accurate Zillow was compared to our on-site evaluations.  Could Zillow or other automated method be used to replace some physical inspections?

   With all these questions I was curious to see how could I independently evaluate Zillow and other automated tools accuracy?  I developed a test to compare Zillow values with our values from a physical property inspection across a wide range of properties.  The results were quite unexpected.. Read the full article in the CO Biz Magazine

Written by Glen Weinberg, COO/ VP Fairview Commercial Lending. Fairview is a hard money lender specializing in private money loans in Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, and Florida. They are recognized in the industry as the leader in hard money lending with no upfront fees or any other games. Learn more about Hard Money Lending through our free Hard Money Guide.