I could be wrong/blind but it appears as though Zillow.com has done away with its best feature - Sales Price History.
Obviously it's an attempt to placate and solicit ads from those unctuous realtors. God forbid any prospective buyer find out that homes can be disastrous *investments*...
Yet another triumph for *opacity*!
Here's hoping the website DIES and its owners get foreclosed upon.
UPDATE - It appears that I am wrong/blind. An intern from Zillow.com informed me in the comment section that *sale history* is still being duly reported on their website.
Look. I most certainly did not imagine this. I'd been looking at *sale history* on that site for a few years before without any trouble. Then all of a sudden I couldn't find that data on the last bunch I pulled up. And it could be because I started searching an area (NY?) that simply didn't have much published sales price history. I don't know. But this morning, BEFORE running this post I did a quick Google of the question and came upon this:
That complaint was not only curiously unanswered, it was ON THEIR WEBSITE. One might think they would address those critiques before coming here...
I simply combined my frustrated personal experience with that corroborating link and a dollop of my trademark cynicism in penning the post. I can't well research everything to the Nth, now can I?
I think they may have removed the explicit link to *sales history* and folded it into their ridiculous estimated *price history* (at the behest of advertising brokers?). So if you click on price history it should be there, although it's *buried* by the laughable and infinitely useless *5 year* default time range. You'll have to expand it.
Note that most real estate brokers today LOVE the *5 year* time-line as well!
3 comments:
I'm fairly certain Trulia did the same thing.
I also find it annoying when these sites conveniently omit any mention of real estate tax assessment, as if to say that an extra $500-1000 out of your pocket every month is somehow insignificant...
Hey, Sara from Zillow here. Ouch on the title and closing line?
We did not do away with the Price History, in fact in the last redesign of the pages, we made it larger. There is a whole chart dedicated to the Price History under the Zestimate graph. There are also still charts for all of the tax history about the home that we data for. Perhaps we just didn't have any data for the specific home you were viewing.
Interesting that you find that piece of information to be 'the best feature' on the site- given everything else that is available. I can see how it would help a negotiation position. Yet another reason why it is important to come out of the gate priced right - not priced at what you hope to get.
So in fact, one for *transparency* and minus one for *opacity*!
Sara,
I've responded in my post. Thanks.
Post a Comment