
Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Zillow, sold his house in Seattle in February for a cool $1,050,000. You might be wondering why I am telling you about this. Who cares if Spencer sold his house..whatever. Well, what makes this story interesting is that Rascoff’s website, Zillow, zestimated that the house is actually worth $1,608,670, off by a measly 53% of the actual market value.
And while it’s super fun for real estate agents to bash the “evil” Zillow monster, the realty is that computer-generated valuations are far from the best way to determine what your house is worth. By definition, the market value is the amount of money a qualified buyer is willing to pay on any given day. Technically, the only completely accurate way to know the value of your home is to sell it.