Exactly what is the point to Zoopla other than entertainment and voyeurism?

SarahJanie

Hello all, my first postie so please be gentle.


We all know the pros and cons of Zoopla's shaky valuations, but has anyone considered the moral pros and cons?

Zoopla ask members of the public to give them information, they don’t so much care that the person or persons giving their estimate on a house could have malicious intentions or perhaps just don’t think about the affect it may have on the house owner. I myself have seen my mother’s house valued several times and wrong information put in, we have no power over this it would seem. I don’t particularly want Joe Blogs down the street to be able to hike the price of her house up, perhaps just to make his/her own look more expensive. What if my mum wanted to sell and have accurate information for prospective house purchasers to see? It just seems wrong to me.

Am I the only one that worries that this popular site is really quite naughty?

poppysarah

Making money. I think that's one of it's aims.

Swipe

Why do people change from the default font when posting?

Wickedkitten

Zoopla is ok if you actually feed it the right figures. I plugged in the ones of the house we are buying and actually managed to bring the street average down by about 30k ^_^

silvercar

Swipe wrote: »

Why do people change from the default font when posting?

Because they copy and paste something that they, or someone else, has posted elsewhere.

Or maybe they compose their words in software with a spell/ grammer checker and then post.

Or maybe they are just attention seeking - mainly posted in bright red large size underlined font;, though I always think this would be the sort of person who would add a footnote to the handwritten letter to say "written in green wax crayon as sharp objects have been removed for my protection".

Robert_Sterling_3

Swipe wrote: »

Why do people change from the default font when posting?

Good ......................QUestion

:EasterBun :EasterBun :EasterBun :EasterBun :EasterBun

Davesnave

I do have malicious intentions, and you have given me a splendid idea.* Thanks!


* This goes for hundreds of others too!

Running_Horse

SarahJanie wrote: »

We all know the pros and cons of Zoopla's shaky valuations

Do we all know this?

Fascinating first post.

If you don't like it, don't go there?

SarahJanie

Looks like I gave the forum font police a much needed orgasm. lol

Thank you for all your replies, although I don’t need to use Zoopla, it is there for people to rate my mothers house up and down…and your own! My poor mother will try to sell in the next six months and when a prospective buyer looks on that site the prices will all be wrong.

I just hope that people don’t believe every valuation they see on that site. Although if I rate my mothers house £30k over its worth, will she get it? Do you think it is worth a try?

I look forward to all comments, especially the sarcastic ones. :T

Wickedkitten

SarahJanie wrote: »

Looks like I gave the forum font police a much needed orgasm. lol

Thank you for all your replies, although I don’t need to use Zoopla, it is there for people to rate my mothers house up and down…and your own! My poor mother will try to sell in the next six months and when a prospective buyer looks on that site the prices will all be wrong.

I just hope that people don’t believe every valuation they see on that site. Although if I rate my mothers house £30k over its worth, will she get it? Do you think it is worth a try?

I look forward to all comments, especially the sarcastic ones. :T

It won't matter in the slightest because at the end of the day, the only valuation that is worth anything is what the bank values the property as, not you, your mum, or your mum's buyer.

googler

Zoopla, like all the other property prices websites, gets its 'Sold' prices with a feed from Land Registry or Registers of Scotland.

It provides estimates which seem to be modified by the data that people enter about the houses - number of bedrooms, floor area, garden size, style of house or flat, etc....

Whilst you may be able to manipulate the Zoopla estimate with any amount of falsely entered data, you can't change the prices that are shown on Zoopla's "Sold Prices" tab - and these are the ones that matter, surely?

I've always ignored the estimates, as I thought not enough people would have completed data to make them accurate...... but it seems they can't be relied on as a result of folks trying to cheat the estimate.

The values that matter are (mostly):
What similar houses have sold for recently in the street or area
The current asking prices for other similar houses in competition to yours
The value the surveyor puts in the home report.
The asking price
What buyer prospects can afford to pay

If you don't like Zoopla, don't use it - there's no evidence that it has majority or widespread use throughout the country, and I'll wager a large proportion of housebuyers have never heard of it.