What's Hot: A Snapshot Of Apartment Rents Across The DC Area
$1 Million Awaits Whoever Can Improve Zestimate's Accuracy
✉️ Want to forward this article? Click here.
Most prospective homebuyers or people interested in real estate are familiar with Zestimate, Zillow’s tool that approximates home values. However, the tool has been getting some negative attention in the wake of a class-action lawsuit in Illinois that decries the tool’s inaccuracies as undermining home sales.
Today, Zillow announced the Zillow Prize, a contest that will award $1 million to whomever can improve the tool’s precision.
Zestimate’s accuracy has already improved since its unveiling 11 years ago, from monthly updates garnering an estimate with a 14 percent error rate to instantaneous updates that put half of all Zestimates within 5 percent of the home’s eventual sales price.
Analysis factors include data such as comparable sales, price per square foot, tax assessments and last sales price. This data is then plugged into a larger algorithm that constantly assesses the weight of these factors in each census tract in order to recommend an estimated home value.
story continues below
loading...story continues above
“Zillow is by far the most widely-used real estate site by a mile, and so Zestimates are prominent and not everybody will always agree with them,” Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff commented during a CBS interview earlier this morning. “Ultimately, the Zestimate is a great starting point, really good information, but every home is worth what a buyer will pay for it and somebody applies human judgment on top of that.”
Now, Zillow is aiming to leverage that “human judgment” by essentially crowdsourcing a solution to improve the computational accuracy of the Zestimate home valuation algorithm.
A public qualifying round, requesting models that will lessen the tool’s residual error, will close next January and narrow the contestants down to 100 teams. The final round will require teams to create algorithms that actually predict home sales prices. The winner will be selected January 15, 2019.
As for the lawsuit? Rascoff dismissed it as “frivolous” and “without merit”.
See other articles related to: appraisals, home values, zestimate, zillow
This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/1_million_prize_awaits_whoever_can_improve_zestimates_accuracy/12610.
Most Popular... This Week • Last 30 Days • Ever
Today, UrbanTurf takes a look at the office-to-residential conversions on the boards ... read »
Today, we take a closer look at home insurance.... read »
Monument Realty and Mosaic Realty Partners redevelopment plans for a surface parking ... read »
A new report shows that apartment rents rose ever so slightly in DC over the last yea... read »
UrbanTurf is taking its semi-regular look at the areas around DC that have seen the h... read »
- A Look At The 9 Office-To-Residential Conversions On The Boards in DC
- A Look at What is Covered By Home Insurance
- 235-Unit Development With Public Park Pitched For Downtown Bethesda Looks To Move Forward
- A Snapshot Of Apartment Rents Across The DC Area
- The 5 Zip Codes in the Maryland Suburbs With the Highest Home Price Appreciation in 2024
DC Real Estate Guides
Short guides to navigating the DC-area real estate market
We've collected all our helpful guides for buying, selling and renting in and around Washington, DC in one place. Start browsing below!
First-Timer Primers
Intro guides for first-time home buyers
Unique Spaces
Awesome and unusual real estate from across the DC Metro