Name:   John C - Subject:   Need help from John C on this Date:   1/31/2018 9:06:08 AM (updated 1/31/2018 9:12:30 AM)

Martini- Sorry, I thought I answered that earlier. Is your question "While we all agree they are innacurate on each home, are they accurate in general to track pricing trends?" no. Not at all.

The first reason is the classic argument of going from the lesser to the greater. If we all agree that they are terrible at pricing homes individually, then how can they get trends correct? if their underlying data (specific home values) is off, then how much more will their overall trend be off? It's like a carpenter that is not good at measuring small lengths with his tape measure - and then hoping that the whole house in general will be square.

Another reason is that ZTR can't differentiate between waterfront and non waterfront. Now, they might have a field on their page that says "Waterfront: Yes" but they are not using it to affect price or trend. Meaning, it would try and apply the same trends to a wf house in Trillium to a manufactured home off of Cotton Road in Eclectic, just because they might be 3/4 of a mile away from each other as the crow flies. Related question- what if some Silicon Valley nerd figures out a magic formula to take waterfront in to account? My answer- so they will be able to tell you how good the view is from this home versus that? That these neighbors party a lot and this one does not? That the trees on this lot give a lot of privacy? Etc.

Another big reason is that Alabama does not record sale prices of real estate in their county tax information in a way that gets uploaded. This might change in the future, but right now the aggregators like ZTR (Zillow, Truila, and Realtor.com and their ilk), cannot track sold price trends.