Zoopla is crippling our sales prospects

thegrind

This just goes to show that no one knows what a house is actually worth anyway and rely on Zoopla to give them guidance???

Leo2020

When we tried to sell our house, we were told by YourMove that it had the same value as two others that recently sold that were complete dumps and needed everything doing to them (he specifically showed us these houses in relation to how he worked out the value of our house). Ours is a very well kept house.

He also showed us another house on the street which was in good condition and told us that it struggled to sell even though it was on for a low price and in the end the vendor took it off the market. When we spoke to the EA later but to a different person she told us how people were fighting over it and they had only marketed it low to get people interested - which had worked and they had sold it.

The EA had just looked at recently sold houses on the street, he paid no attention to the condition and either lied or was mis-informed about another house.

princeofpounds

It's a depressing trend but I too have heard instances where people are just using zoopla to value properties without any critical thinking. And yes, that includes lazy agents.

Don't kid yourselves, many agents 'valuers' are nothing more than salespeople to get instructions, with no real understanding of valution or interest in getting a good estimation. I used to know a guy who 'valued' for his local agents in his university holidays; freely admitted he would frequently just use one local comparable without any real investigation of its relationship to the property being marketed and add 10%.

It should be evident to anyone who has a shred of intelligence that half the time zoopla spouts total rubbish, but people seem to think it is strangely official in some way.

DaftyDuck

In one way, Zoopla has done you a favour. It's quickly told you which estate agents are idiots who rely on a quick internet pricing and would muck up any house sale.

Find a better agent. There are some good ones.

getmore4less

How many properties in the block have gone on sale(sold or not) since the Nov 2012 one? what were they asking/getting.

what's selling and for how much that is similar nearby?

If there is nothing sold in the block because no one has tried then you will have to set the new benchmark.

moneyistooshorttomention

DaftyDuck wrote: »

In one way, Zoopla has done you a favour. It's quickly told you which estate agents are idiots who rely on a quick internet pricing and would muck up any house sale.

Find a better agent. There are some good ones.

Seconded:T

I'd certainly keep hunting until I found an EA who agreed with me as to what the price is and looked like they were going to do a decent job of marketing it.

I would think most would-be buyers know not to take Zoopla guesstimates of price accurately. I only wish I had been able to with my last one, as Zoopla "thought" I should charge noticeably more than I was actually able to.:(

I never did check what Zoopla "thought" about my current houseprice...though, mind you, this is a bit of a one-off house...

Brock_and_Roll

Icthalian wrote: »

Hi all,

New to the MSE arena so please bear with me if this has been posted before (I couldn't find anything).

My wife and I are in the first stages of trying to get our apartment onto the market but we're having Zoopla-related issues. Apparently during the recession there was 1 repossession in our 37-apartment building where a 2 bedroom flat was sold by the bank at £58k. We are now struggling to get an estate agent to take us seriously because this is on record on Zoopla; our larger, well kept 2 bedroom apartment is worth in excess of £100k (we managed to get 3 valuations late last year) but we're seemingly tied into it now because of someone else's financial misfortunes. :mad:

Does the MSE-verse have any suggestions on how we proceed please?

Don't forget that from the Bank's perspective, if they had to sell the property themselves it would be as a repossession with a reasonable chance that this would occur at a bad time in the market. So it is natural for them to think "this is how much we would actually get in a worst case scenario".

Talc1234

Icthalian wrote: »

Hi all,

New to the MSE arena so please bear with me if this has been posted before (I couldn't find anything).

My wife and I are in the first stages of trying to get our apartment onto the market but we're having Zoopla-related issues. Apparently during the recession there was 1 repossession in our 37-apartment building where a 2 bedroom flat was sold by the bank at £58k. We are now struggling to get an estate agent to take us seriously because this is on record on Zoopla; our larger, well kept 2 bedroom apartment is worth in excess of £100k (we managed to get 3 valuations late last year) but we're seemingly tied into it now because of someone else's financial misfortunes. :mad:

Does the MSE-verse have any suggestions on how we proceed please?

Assuming that the repossession was a distressed sale and consequently would have sold for 10-30% below market value, other flats in the block would be worth £65 - £75K with some adjustment for size, condition and changes in the market

I guess this is something you don't want to hear but you can hardly blame zoopla for posting data in the public domain.

bclark

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Seconded:T

I'd certainly keep hunting until I found an EA who agreed with me as to what the price is and looked like they were going to do a decent job of marketing it.

I would think most would-be buyers know not to take Zoopla guesstimates of price accurately. I only wish I had been able to with my last one, as Zoopla "thought" I should charge noticeably more than I was actually able to.:(

I never did check what Zoopla "thought" about my current houseprice...though, mind you, this is a bit of a one-off house...

Totally agree, just get a different agent along to do a proper valuation. You do not want one that relies on Zoopla as a main tool for valuation.

We had an agent from a big local chain value our house on the basis of what we bought for eight years earlier plus house price inflation over that time. This was despite the fact that we bought through them and they had the details showing it was a virtual wreck in major need of modernisation, which we had done.

They valued the house at £200k, two other agents valued it at £250k and we sold for £242.500k after 4 weeks. I often wonder how many people get caught out by just getting the 'big' agents in and believing what they are told by them.

hazyjo

Are you sure there's nothing you're missing that the local EAs would know but wouldn't want disclose to prospective buyers? Bypass? High speed train? Missing freeholder? Landfill site at end of road? Planning applications? Subsidence? Hmm, I bet there's something.

Sounds very fishy to me that all the EAs are now saying this. There's definitely something you're missing...

Anyway, you can decide what they market at. Why don't you just sign up and test the market. Maybe even send a fake viewer round (friend) who can tell you what they're telling them.

Jx