Zillow can be really far off. Zillow is not used for appraisal purposes. Financed homes are appraised, but if a home/property is purchased with cash, and appraisal might not be required.

Don't worry about zillow. We had a similar issue with its 'zestimate' coming in well below what the realtors suggested and even lower than we eventually priced and sold it at. The zestimate did not have any effect on our sale.

There's a lot of sketchy or misinformation on Zillow. It shows my house, purchased 18 months ago, as worth $46,000 less than I paid. It also shows the woman who bought it in 2007, then lost her husband within a few short months prompting her to move back to the city where she had raised her children, as having paid $121,000 too much.

'Forced air heat'. Well, no, it's radiant embedded in the ceilings. 'Full finished basement' - when there is clean dry unfinished storage of approx. 800 sq feet under a 3,000 sq ft house ;)

I'm not sure anyone takes Zillow too seriously other than possibly checking asking price and looking for the listing photos when house hunting...

If we put our house on the market at the Zillow zestimate, we would have a crowd waiting outside the minute it got listed! Zillow should not be used as a pricing tool.

I think Zillow is great to help find the value of a neighborhood. For instance, do homes in this general area tend to be valued at $100k or $500k. But it's not accurate on an individual home basis.

I'm amazed at how many homes in my neighborhood show up as valued at $1. I'd gladly buy any of those homes for 100 times zillows value!

Zillow is way off for my house too. Bought 18 years ago and did a major addition / renovation 5 years ago. It still lists the house with the pre-addition info (e.g. number of bedrooms and bathrooms.) I'm not updating it because if and when I sell, if someone tries to use the Zillow price for negotiating I can point out all the errors in the information.

re: your question about appraisals: a potential buyer's bank will look for an appraisal if they as for a loan. But they won't use Zillow information.

Zillow is FAR more accurate in suburban areas where there are homogeneous chunks of housing and fairly active turnover.

In a stable area, or the oddly mixed housing of small towns, it sucks