How accurate are Zoopla valuations?

[dungandbother]

Posting for traffic dear MN

Is Zoopla a wild stab in the dark when it comes to the values of property?

When Zoopla shows a range say
£288-£335k is this a decent figure that a qualified surveyor would likely come up with ?

Very inaccurate due to the property being part-bought several times by different members of the previous family.
It meant the exact same house on the same street had a £150,000 difference.

Lucky you feel sorry for your partner as they deserved 50%

Three of us in a row have a minimum of 25% difference in price. Identical houses.
The algorithm basically applies the price rises or falls for houses in a similar bracket in the same town since the last sale value. You can subvert that by providing a valuation but it doesn't actually mean anything.
If you bought a repossession that was a shell next door to an identical well maintained house which sold for full asking price at the same time, the expensive house will maintain a price differential on Zoopla.

The bank valued my flat at nearly 100k more than Zoopla.

Wildly inaccurate in my street. I live in a cul de sac all properties are flats. half are owned by a housing Association the other half are bought. Zoopla values the 3 bedroomed HA flats at anything between £103,000-108,000 but values a 3 bedroomed bought flat, exactly the same layout, no difference whatsoever, between £30,000 and 93,000.

Agree with alun- all it does it take the last sold price and add the market increase for the area. They have no idea (obviously!) what sort of condition your property is in. So in our case we bought a project at well below market rate and refurbished it so the zoopla valuation is always low

BUT last remortgage that’s basically what the desktop validation went on. We could’ve challenged it and paid for aproper valuation but as we didn’t need the extra value for the remortgage we didn’t bother

Not great for new builds. But as it gets more info on the street it gets more accurate. My zoopla valuation is way over what either of my next door neighbours got.

Zoopla values my house at £400k. Estate agent recently valued it at £550k, with a view to getting £525k+ so its quite a way out for me (I hope!!)

I bought it for a really good price 10 years ago, so that is reflected in the current valuation as its based on previous purchase prices.

Same house type up the road (although a slightly bigger garden) is valued at £510k

Very inaccurate when your house’s unique for your street and never being sold or recently renovated/extended.

Just had a look at mine now.
Mine is valued at £168,000 for a 3 bed detached in a small Welsh suburb. I’d say that’s quite high and would prob think it’s more around the £150, maybe £155k at a push.
Another house in the street identical to mine (fairly modern estate) is valued at £151k but I know he had his valued by an agent for about £165k.
Ours needs a little updating in the bathroom and kitchen. If I did those then maybe £168k would be about right.

Really inaccurate if you live in an area where people don’t tend to move.

Often estate agents will look at zoopla to see if anything else close and similar to your property sold recently. ..and of the can be arsed edit this depending and then add a bit to decrease later once they have you over a barrel. ...

A far more accurate appraisal is a proper valuer

Just looked up our house says £405k,it's probably around £325k.

Completely wrong for two properties in quite different parts of the country for me - wildly overvalued in both cases.

It's an algorithn based on last sold price and increases (or decreases) since then in the local area. So it takes no account of whether someone gets a bargain or overpays, nor any property improvements and extensions, etc.

If you look up land registry sale prices for houses that you judge to be similar from a review of the estate agent details then that would give you a better guide.

Completely inaccurate. We've doubled the size of our house since we bought it, so it values our house about £300k less than it's worth!

1 street, same house foot prints. Nothing particularly different in terms of location/plot size/condition etc

Zoopla valuations =
£451k
£329k
£358k
£339k
£444k

Not at all. Valued ours at twice it's actual value. Even if our house had been perfect it would still have been over valued by, probably, £10-20,000, which is a lot when you're looking at houses worth less than £100,000.

In my area ish, but obviously there can be massive variation in how much work a property might need and zoopla don't really have any way of knowing that when it's not on the market.

@Palegreenstars That’s interesting, did they use the zoopla valuation instead of a surveyor?

Our fixed rate runs out next year and I wondered if banks would use the zoopla valuation rather than the faff of getting a surveyor out.

Very accurate for me, but I live on a street where all the houses were built at the same time about 10 years ago and are very similar to each other.

Really inaccurate, our house for some bizarre reason is valued at about £100k more than similar on the street, it's not any different I would expect variation of £10-20k and ours would be lower than some.