Real estate needs real numbers, not Z’s.

It’s often hard to tell whether Valleywag is talking straight or into the side of its cheek, but Nick claims to like Zillow, an online service that estimates the value of a home given its address.

After you enter an address, Zillow presents a nifty aerial view of the neighborhood, with property lines drawn and values placed on each lot. Very cool, but I know that if we tried to put our house on the market for what they say it’s worth, we’d be sitting on it a long time. We just bought our house about a year and a half ago, so they must not have consulted the public record of the sale, nor that of the county tax assessor. I also notice that the aerial views are out of date: our old address doesn’t show two houses that were built in the neighborhood about two years ago. One of the lots was split, and that isn’t shown either. You have to wonder how much of their pricing is based on current, hard market data and how much is projection from old or general-neighborhood numbers.

Seems to me that watching the local market in the MLS listings would give you a better clue as to how to price your house. It’s a shame, because this could be a great service if they could get the data right. In the housing market, bad information is worse than no information.