No, not exactly!

But we found a glitch on Zillow that makes it look like we did.

We all look at Zestimates. They are ubiquitous. 91% of all homes in King County have a Zestimate. When we meet with a potential home seller, most of them have the Zestimate for their property on the tip of their tongue. Zestimates are treated as the gold standard.

This week, we sold a home for 196% of it's Zestimate. We listed the home for $1.5m and sold it for $1.6m. The Zestimate? $815,105. See for yourself here. That's a difference of $784,895. The fact is, Zillow admits on their own website that (as of this writing) only 43.6% of Zestimates of King County homes are within 5% of the sale price. Let's flip this around: 56.4% of Zestimates in King County are off by more than 5% of the sale price. Last month, the average sale price in King County was $560,000. 5% of the average sale price is $28,000. And while we understand that this particular listing is a fluke, and that most Zestimates are more accurate, one should be skeptical of automated home valuations. Each home is unique, and Zestimates cannot and do not take into account updates, upgrades, condition and other important factors that significantly impact the value of a property. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to leave $28,000 (or more) on the table.