Like every other home seller in the New Orleans metro area, you went to Zillow and looked up your address. You were hoping that the Zestimate would tell you what your home is worth. The question lingers, though: are Zestimates accurate in New Orleans?
NOPE.
Why Zestimates are wrong in New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole.
The state of Louisiana does not provide sold information publicly. While you can look on your assessor’s site or read real estate transfers in the paper, the state does not provide the sold price to websites like Zillow or Realtor.com.
However, these days, many other brokerages are now feeding that info to these sites. This still does not change the fact that an algorithm won’t know your home’s worth.
What this means for you with inaccurate Zestimates
It means that Zestimates are based on what is currently listed for sale. These Zestimates do not factor in housing conditions, what houses actually sold for, closing cost assistance, and many other things – like does the house have massive foundation issues, does it smell like a cat litter box, and things of the sort!
Is your Zestimate completely wrong?
In New Orleans – I have seen many that are off by more than $100k.
How do I determine the value of my house?
First, hire an experienced New Orleans real estate agent. If you have truly unique property, hire an appraiser to get a better idea of the value. And while we can look at numbers and give you a number to list your house for, your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay!
Appraisers aren’t the end-all, be-all.
Let me be the first to tell you that we can get 5 appraisers to come out and look at your house. We will end up with 5 different values. Trust your top New Orleans real estate agent to help guide you on pricing your home after your appraisal.
Other ways Zillow is wrong
Zillow also “predicts” where the housing value will go in the next year. That’s a bold statement when they are not factoring in what is happening in each city individually. Considering they don’t have all the true sold info and have no way to determine what each city is up to with business growth, etc., they likely shouldn’t make such predictions.
Zillow also offers info about school districts. However, I have met numerous people who trusted that info to find out the house they wanted was not in a particular school district.
Who can I trust?
Get a New Orleans real estate agent who actually knows what’s going on. Only hire a full-time agent, and feel free to use our list of questions to ask your potential real estate agent.
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Price Per Square Foot: Why we don’t price your house that way