Don't like your Zestimate? Tough luck!

[Mark Rogers]

A seller in Illinios listed his home for $1.5 million and thought that the Zestimate of $1.3 million for his house was too low and scared away potential buyers. He asked Zillow to increase its Zestimate or remove it from Zillow’s database. Zillow refused, so the seller filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Zillow was, among other things, violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Consumer Fraud statute. The lower court dismissed the suit and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on grounds that those statues deal with false or misleading statements of fact, “while Zestimates are opinions, which canonically are not actionable.” Patel v. Zillow, Inc., No. 18-2130, 2019 WL 491797 (7th Cir. Feb. 8, 2019).

[Lynnette E.]

I think that the right people can get the Zillow estimates changed.  Look at anything advertised with a common auction site and you will see the Zillow estimate has changed, the price history is gone, the basis of the Zestimate is completely gone, only thing that may be left is a new estimate that is pretty close to the auction site's unrevealed reserve bid.  Try it, seems to work for me.  May just happen, but I am not thinking it just happened on 3 cases I bid on.