Zillow Awards $1 Million to Improve Zestimate's Accuracy
✉️ Want to forward this article? Click here.
Nearly two years ago, scrutiny of Zillow's Zestimate tool was at such a fever pitch that the company offered $1 million to whomever could improve the tool's accuracy. Now, a winning team has been crowned.
Today, Zillow announced the winning team of the Zillow Prize. The winners beat out over 3,800 teams from 91 countries, with a tool that bested the Zestimate benchmark by 13 percent. Zestimate is a tool on Zillow's website that offers users an estimate of a home's value based on a variety of available public data; many homeowners have complained over the years that the tool undervalued their properties.
For the DC area, 66 percent of the 1.8 million homes which have Zestimates were valued within 5 percent of their sale price and 93.8 percent were valued within 20 percent of their sale price, leaving a 3.1 percent margin of error — far better than Zestimate's accuracy in other metro areas.
story continues below
loading...story continues above
The winning team, Team ChaNJestimate, is comprised of teammates from the U.S., Morocco and Canada, none of whom have met each other in person. Zillow's data scientists have already begun incorporating elements of the winning algorithm into the Zestimate system, so the tool should be incrementally improving. Zestimate tends to be $10,000 off on the actual sales price of the average home; the new algorithm should narrow the gap by $1,300.
"As a result of these improvements, their work will help push the Zestimate’s current nationwide error rate of 4.5 percent to below 4 percent and result in more precise home valuations, potentially by thousands of dollars, for millions of homeowners," a statement reads.
See other articles related to: zestimate, zestimates, zillow
This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/zillow-awards-team-to-improve-zestimates-accuracy/14946.
Most Popular... This Week • Last 30 Days • Ever
In this edition of First-Timer Primer, we look at the ins and outs of the 203k loan.... read »
The largest residential conversion planned in the neighborhood is continuing to move ... read »
Plans for the large new residential project are looking to get started again after mo... read »
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jeff Skoll has purchased two homes on nine ... read »
The residential pipeline in Adams Morgan has slowed in recent years, and now there ar... read »
DC Real Estate Guides
Short guides to navigating the DC-area real estate market
We've collected all our helpful guides for buying, selling and renting in and around Washington, DC in one place. Start browsing below!
First-Timer Primers
Intro guides for first-time home buyers
Unique Spaces
Awesome and unusual real estate from across the DC Metro