How accurate is Zoopla?

[frozenmad]

We have been in our house for 6 years & extended it, adding an extra bedroom, bathroom & playroom, not to mention new windows, doors, electrics, modernisation. We had an estate agent round for a valuation and he priced the house at at the same price as zoopla. I'm quite surprised at this as the zoopla price was based on what we paid/original size of the house. I'm slightly confused by this & wondered if zoopla over-estimates house prices. TIA

Get a second valuation. Some lazy estate agents use zoopla to aid their valuation. Sounds almost too coincidental that they came up with the same valuation.

Not at all. Our house is listed at about £30k more than our neighbours because it's semi detached. It isn't, we live in a row of six terraces!

Zoopla is really not very accurate at all. It just goes by what has been sold recently in your area and your precious sold price. It doesn't take into account anything else!

Ha, just zooplad my house it is a semi, so identical to the neighbours. Our mri ours house comes up at £35K more than ours.

Neighbours*

Zoopla is just a simple algorithm applied to the last known value (usually sale price) of your house.
I believe you can edit the details and increase the value.

It's rubbish. Our house is worth almost £1 million on Zoopla. It may be once we've massively extended and renovated it, but certainly not in its current state!

I wouldn't trust Zoopla at all.

Did he say that it was the Zoopla value? Could it be that the Zoopla figure is (independently) his value? You may in theory have added value by extending etc but if the value has dropped since you bought it, maybe the EA's valuation irrespective of Zoopla is about right?

Always get more than one valuation from agents - preferably 3 - who are active in your area and sell your type of property.
Zoopla is not 100% accurate reflection. It can be a useful tool!

It's worth bearing in mind that Zoopla is available to prospective buyers and might influence the offers that they are willing to make.

That said, it is only an algorithm (as pp have said) and should be taken with plenty of human judgement and a healthy pinch of salt

A well seeing as it reackons our 3 bed/1 bath house has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms I'd say not that accurate.
Also it has no record of our purchase. Only the people who owned it before us.

Is there a record on rightmove Smartiepants?
They both get sold prices from land registry so if they're not showing your transaction then you need to get in touch with Land Registry and bollock your solicitor for not filing the paperwork.

Zoopla undervalues ours, even after I updated it and our neighbours sold recently. I'd get another valuation if I were you and maybe have some local recent sold prices to discuss when they visit.

Seems fairly accurate for our street, but then most of the flats and houses have sold at least once in the last 10 years so lots of data to go on.

Very inaccurate ime.

The other half of our semi (both unextended) is 60% more than ours, purely based on the fact it was last sold at the height of the market whereas ours was bought 5 years later.

We are in the process of re-mortgaging and the mortgage consultant has taken the Zoopla figure as a primary estimate. It will be valued next week by an estate agent.

I suspect it would be accurate if we'd done nothing to it as it's just based on the 2010 purchase price and the increased value over time. We've put in a new kitchen and bathroom, central heating, new electrics, parking space, full redecoration, new floors throughout, modernised, removed 2 walls, landscaped the garden. For starters. Will be interesting to see what it's actually worth in comparison.

Zoopla is way out on our house. We bought it as 3 bed 1 bath and have extended to make it 4 bed 2 bath etc. The other thing is we live on a street with terraced houses selling at £170k and huge detached homes selling at £750k so it's calculation on recently sold prices is I guess skewed by the mix of houses.

Not accurate at all. It seems to take an average price for the area as well which, in areas of mixed housing, gives a mis-leading figure.

I noticed that my house, which is in a small cul-de-sac of 15 detached 4-beds, is listed as a 3 bedroom semi. Apparently, this is an error from the Land Registry, but they won't rectify it (or help me get my Council tax reduced!). I'd love to know how my house can be a semi, when both my next-door-neighbours are detached. Who am I joined to?

Inaccurate. My house is over-valued on zoopla by about 50k

Clam is your house smaller than listed or larger?

You can apply directly to the Valuation Office Agency for a reassessment of the council tax band if you think it has been incorrectly banded in error. Classic example is a street of 4 bedroomed detached and there's a couple of 3 bed semi-detacheds which got lumped into the same band.

www.gov.uk/council-tax-bands

Beware, as it can go up as well as down, but any increase won't take effect until a relevant transaction takes place.

I'd reiterate that Zoopla isn't particularly accurate in areas of mixed housing. Ours is over-valued I feel but we are surrounded by lots of larger houses which would attract a bigger price increase.

Sorry I wasn't clear. My house is a 4 bed detached (like all the others in the road) but for some reason it's listed as a 3 bed semi. I haven't been able to get anyone (ie the land registry) to reclassify it correctly. I therefore asked if I could reduce my council tax payments to that of a 3 bed semi, but they said no. I was only partly joking.

Oh. Sorry. Think I mis-read too!

Land reg can be a bit hit and miss too, which is worrying.

Hi I'm an ea and agents usually value by accessing recent sold house prices in the area not by zoopla. As you have already discovered zoopla can only come up with a number based on area and size of house it doesn't take into consideration renovation, decor and taste which the agent should. Still a good idea to get a couple more valuations as well. You can also check out your competition on the web by looking to see what other houses are available to prospective buyers in the same price range.

The house we purchased in 2014 was 'valued' £240k higher on Zoopla than the price we paid.

The house we sold was 'valued' at only £50k more than we paid in 2011, despite the fact that we'd taken an unmortgageable wreck and extended it, as well as completely renovating it. You can 'claim' your property on Zoopla, adding info including works carried out and their costs, but this is only visible to the property owner, not the general public.

We sold that house for £100k more than the price Zoopla was saying it was worth.

Neither the house we bought nor the one we sold had any comparables in the immediate vicinity though, both being one-off period houses.

DS bought a flat in London in 2011 and sold in 2014. Neither RM nor Zoopla show the price he paid. They show the previous sale and his sale in 2014 only.

Zoopla shows our home at nearly £200,000 less than the valuations of three estate agents in the last couple of weeks.