Zoopla estimates any good?

[DotTheCaddy]

We've just had an offer of £340K accepted on a property. We thought we had got a bargain as we got £20K off the original asking price, but I've checked the Zoopla predicted value this morning and its £305-330K?!

I am now panicking as we've just arranged for our lender to do a valuation for the mortgage and I'm worried it's going to come back too low.

Does anyone know how Zoopla gets their estimates and if they are accurate?

I think it depends how many good local comparators there are in terms of similar houses and recent sales.

If the house is the same as a few others that have sold recently, you'll get a better estimate than if the house is bigger/smaller or nicer/shabbier than others in the area and there haven't been many sales recently.

You'll just have to wait for the valuation, but a lot of the time, all the lender's valuation is looking for is whether or not they'll get their money back if you default on your mortgage, so if you have a decent deposit it might be simply a box ticking exercise.

A house is only worth what someone is willing to pay, and by offering £340k you must have decided that's what it was worth to you at the time.

They can be very inaccurate.

In my village there is a six-bed house estimated between 257 and 356k, and also a two-bed house estimated between 402 and 604k. I know both houses and they are not startlingly atypical examples of the genre, so the estimates are plain wrong.

If you live in a row of houses very similar to other rows of houses in the area, which go up for sale fairly regularly, it can be pretty good.

If you live in a house that hasn't sold recently, or that is very unlike anything else near it, it's much harder.

Sorry, and to answer your question - zoopla use the last known sale price and the average price increase in the area to calculate likely ranges; they also compare to other houses superficially the same in size (eg. same number of bedrooms).

The longer ago your house was last sold, the harder it is to figure what's accurate.

Thank you @BarbaraofSeville.

There has only been one house on the road sold recently for £300K, but it was end of terrace rather than detached, much smaller kitchen, one fewer reception room and no downstairs loo. Also decor not as nice so we really do feel content with our offer.

We are hoping for a 75% LTV so hopefully that'll be in our favour.

Just cant see the vendor dropping to £305K!

@SarahAndQuack thank you!! Those estimates seem ridiculous!! House last sold in 2004 so a fairly long time ago. I will ignore Zoopla and eagerly await the valuation < hopeful face >

It was way off for ours because they’d just applied the uplift average for the area but our sellers had put a new kitchen and bathroom and a loft extension adding two bedrooms and an en suite.

I think we paid about 120k over the zoopla estimate!

Good luck with it!

I am currently in the opposite position, hoping the Zoopla estimate for the house we want is a bit too high, but I realised looking at the figures that they are just totally unreliable round here.

Fingers crossed for us both.

It’s massive inaccurate for our place - ours is overvalued by 60k and our neighbours identical house Is undervalued by approx 100k

No, Zoopla is generally inaccurate. It is a generic tool with no brain.

I think it's quite inaccurate. It seems to be possibly based on inflation rates following the last sale of the house. Neighbouring identical houses can have wildly varying prices.

Varies. If your house is identical to all the others in the street and there have been lots of sales - accurate.

If your house is nothing like them and last sold 15 years ago - hopeless.

I've just checked on Zoopla for the house I sold a couple of years ago and it has the Council tax banding wrong and insurance estimate ridiculously low. I would not rely on it at all.

My house on zoopla is suggested to be worth between 130k-159 k, the neighbours house which is a carbon copy of mine is between 135k-164k, neither of our houses are worth the top of that band and I think realistically they would be about 127k tops. Other properties of the same type of mine have sold between 115-127k over the past few years.

Zoopla estimates can be a long way off. Houses that were last sold as new build tend to be overvalued on zoopla as it does not take into account new build premium/depreciation. It also does not take into account any home improvements unless someone has manually reported them to the site.

Zoopla does not have enough information to make an accurate valuation. My house estimation is 455k-503k, but this is based on it being a 3 bed semi with 1 bathroom. We extended adding 40m squared, including adding utility and shower room. Currently on the market for 525k.

Just sold my London house in April and the Zoopla estimate/range was pretty accurate, but I think the London property market is so dynamic there is a lot more current sale data to go on.

Interestingly the house I bought out on the south coast was also pretty much bang on for what I bought it for, but my neighbour in the terrace is now selling hers and has achieved more than I bought mine for, so who knows?!

Around here Zoopla is very inaccurate.

Zoopla basically roll a dice and come up with a random number, based on some of the house estimates I've seen on there

I've just checked the prices in my road (only 18 houses here)
Zoopla reckons £521k - £637k for them
Two of them have sold in the last 4 months for £500k each so Zoopla is way out