Is it now a Zillow World?

August opens slowly as Summer has finally fully arrived in Los Angeles with many tourists in town plus plenty of local professionals on their planned vacations. It’s an easy guess to say 30% of real estate agents choose August for their time away since so many buyers & sellers are away at same time.

Zillow invited me to attend a select group of team leaders from around the nation to participate in a unique conference of 20-25 team captains to hear the upcoming plans for the tech app giant. Plenty is in the planning stages. We see the public touring our Open Houses and virtually all of them speak about their Zestimate value --- the value the Zillow app estimates for their home worth. Amazingly, most people believe it is accurate. It is not. It is either higher or lower than your home value. Spencer Rascoff, the founder of Zillow, told me personally that the goal of Zestimate is not its accuracy, but to establish a discussion between real estate professionals and potential clients. I believe him. There is no algorithm (yet) that can accurately gauge your home value. What it can do is provide you with homes in your territory that are similar size, condition and report their selling price so you can estimate your own. That’s as accurate as it gets …. on purpose.

Some of the team captains in my conference manage teams of 100 agents or more. I feel my hands are full with a pro team of 18. We are having a banner year of sales and project even more success for the remaining 5 months of 2019. There is abundant activity -- but you must be aware of growing inventory in some neighborhoods where there can be 31 months of inventory, whereas others exhibit only 5 months of inventory, based on the pace of existing sales. A common Rule of Thumb says a “Buyer’s Market” exists when there is over 6 months of inventory in any given neighborhood. A “Seller’s Market” is when there is less than 6 months of inventory remaining. Please be sure to ask your agent for that important statistic. We provide it to our clients and you should be informed.

We’ll see you in September and wish you a fine ending to your Summer!


-Ernie