Can you trust Zillow Zestimates? If not, how to estimate value?

[Aaron Blevins]

Was talking to a lender friend earlier who said Zillow Zestimates aren't trustworthy at all as they don't factor in REO sales.

So aside from performing an actual appraisal or BPO, what are some good rules of thumb for estimating the true value of a property? 

I'm looking at rental properties inside the city limits of Columbus, Ohio in the Zestimate range of 50-80k, but listed for sale far below that, and I'm curious what values would actually come out in an appraisal.

[Tom Day]

I wrote about this subject on my blog. I may re-publish it here. Too many people make critical decisions based on zillow's horrible data. Same goes for trulia, redfin and other valuation sites.

Here is how accurate zillow is. this is their own table, I captured this right off their site last year and use it in my listing presentations. In my market they only get within 5% of the sale price 33.1% of the time. So 66.9% they miss by more than 5%. That's not good. They seem to skew to the high side too, but that's just my own personal observation.