Online Real Estate Searching: Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com and Non-Disclosure States
Online Real Estate Searching: Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com and Non-Disclosure States
Consumers start their searches online. That is a well-known constant in the real estate marketplace. The megaliths of the industry spice up their online information by adding the sold price or estimated value into their searches. For many who are searching online, this is added valuable information—there are a few exceptions.
Non-Disclosure states do not have the information available for these megalith websites to pull public records from. In fact, in the few non-disclosure states, attempting to pull recent sales data from a public information source will severely skew many online consumers’ expectations.
“Why are Trulia Estimates not available in all locations?
There are many areas across the country where home facts and recent sales data are limited or not available at all. For example, there are certain “non-disclosure” states, like Texas, that do not disclose sale prices for homes in public records http://www.trulia.com/trulia_estimates/.”
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Zillow Estimates Home Values
“Since we rely on public county records as our primary data source driving our Zestimate algorithms (which take comparable sales prices into account), it poses a challenge to calculate accurate Zestimates when sale prices are not available. (http://www.zillow.com/blog/chronicles-of-data-collection-ii-non-disclosure-states-3783/)
Those are the danger words: estimated sales price, poses a challenge to calculate accuracy. Free comps are provided by an online algorithmic code based on data that 'yields a wider margin of error'.”
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Realtor Estimates Home Values
“It is a standard industry practice to estimate sale prices based on one of two methods:
1) transfer tax paid in a home sales transaction (most reliable estimate) and
2) first mortgage amount (yields a wider margin of error) in states without a transfer tax or where than information is unavailable.
That means the consumer will still see “free comps” of estimated sale prices instead of public record actual sales data. (http://www.realtor.com/home-values/HomeValuesFaq.aspx#Whichstatesarenondisclosurestates)””
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Takeaway: In non-disclosure states, online consumers are getting erroneous information.
Non-Disclosure States:
Some states do not disclose the actual value of property sales to the public. Non-disclosure states include: Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
An Agent Estimates Home Values
In the non-disclosure states, the ONLY WAY to get accurate sold comps will be reaching out and breaking that online wall of perceived privacy and asking a real estate agent with access to MLS. Getting comps specifically for your home goes even further.
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