How to inflate your house value on Zillow
Embarrassed what your neighbors think of your Zillow ranking? Add a bedroom.
HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--If you're embarrassed about the value of your house on Zillow, don't fret. You can upgrade it.
The Web site, which tries to determine the value of houses and then serves up the data through its site, has a process in which users can add additional information about their homes that may not be reflected in the public records the company scours, according to Amy Bohutinsky, director of communications at the ThinkEquity Partners' Think Tomorrow Today conference taking place at Half Moon Bay, Calif. (not to be confused with the I Know You Are, But What Am I symposium in nearby El Granada).
Thus, if you've had a major kitchen upgrade or turned the garage into a Jungle Room, you can submit the information to Zillow. In turn, the amendments can upgrade the value of your home.
So far, around 700,000 homeowners have done this, she said. You can learn about the process here.
She also whipped out some interesting facts about the site. Around 33 million homes have been viewed at least once. 90 percent of its users own a home and 50 percent are currently buying or selling a home (which explains why you may want to get those amendments in).
She also said that the price estimates Zillow produces are within a 7.2 percent margin of error on average and are within a 4.3 margin of average within the San Francisco Bay Area. Thus, if Zillow spits out an estimate of $430,000 on a tumbledown shack near a fish processing plant in Sausalito, it's probably pretty close.
