10 min read
The number on Zillow feels official. I get it.
Let us be fair to the estimate first. It comes from a serious company running serious math over millions of records. As a way to watch broad trends, it is genuinely useful. If your neighborhood's values have climbed over five years, the estimate will generally reflect that. If the market cools, it will drift down.
It is also free, instant, and it does not try to sell you anything in the moment. I understand completely why it becomes the anchor. A stranger's algorithm can feel more neutral than an agent who wants your listing.
So your instinct to start there is reasonable. My only argument in this article is about what the number is for. It is built to be roughly right about many houses at once. Your sale is one house, one street, one condition, one moment. That difference sounds small. It is where all the money is.
Even Zillow says this, by the way. They publish their error ranges and plainly state the estimate is a starting point, not an appraisal. The problem is not the tool. The problem is when a starting point becomes a listing price.
How the estimate actually gets made
An automated estimate is a statistical model. It pulls what is publicly available: county tax records, your home's recorded square footage, bed and bath counts, lot size, past sale prices, and recent sales nearby. Then it compares your home's data to thousands of others and produces a predicted price.
Notice what that list is made of. Records. Not rooms. The model has never been inside your house. It has never been inside your neighbor's house either. It knows your kitchen exists. It has no idea whether that kitchen was gutted and redone two years ago or still has the cabinets from 1994.
The model works from averages, so it is most accurate for the most average homes: recently built, in large uniform subdivisions, where every third house is nearly identical and sells often. The further your home sits from average, in age, condition, lot, or style, the wider the model has to guess.
Averages have another quirk that matters to you. When a model is off, it is off in both directions across thousands of homes, and those errors cancel out in the statistics. They do not cancel out for you. You get one number, and if it is the one that is high or low by a wide margin, the average accuracy of the model is no comfort at all.
That is not a flaw in the math. It is just what the math is for. It measures markets. It does not price houses.
What the algorithm cannot see about my house
Here is where estimates and reality separate. The gap almost always comes from things that are invisible in public records but obvious the moment you stand in the driveway.
In Central Ohio, the school boundary issue deserves special mention. District and even building-level boundaries run through the middle of neighborhoods here. Two nearly identical homes a quarter mile apart can feed different schools, and buyers pay real premiums for specific ones. An algorithm using distance and neighborhood averages can smear that premium across homes that do not qualify for it, or miss it on homes that do.
None of these are exotic. Every one of them shows up weekly in real Central Ohio sales. And every one of them is invisible to a model reading tax records.
- Renovations that never touched a permit: a remodeled kitchen, refinished floors, a new bath, a finished lower level
- Condition and maintenance: the roof's age, the furnace's age, water history, how the house smells when the door opens
- Block-level position: backing to a busy road versus a tree line, a corner lot on a cut-through street versus a quiet cul-de-sac, power lines, drainage
- School boundaries that split neighborhoods, common across Central Ohio, where the assigned school changes the buyer pool house by house
- Layout and light: two homes with identical square footage can live completely differently, and buyers price the feel, not the footage
- Anything recorded wrong in county data: wrong square footage, an unrecorded addition, an extra bath the record missed
My neighbor is asking way more, so mine must be worth at least that
This one deserves its own section, because it costs sellers more than the algorithm does. A neighbor's asking price is not evidence of value. It is evidence of what one hopeful person, with their own Zillow number in their head, decided to try.
A listing price is an opening offer to the market. The market gets to say no, and right now it says no often. Per the Columbus MLS, pulled August 10, 2026, covering the previous 90 days, 46 percent of active Dublin listings have cut their price at least once, and the average cut is above $50,000.
Sit with that for a second. In one of Central Ohio's strongest suburbs, nearly half the sellers currently on the market asked for a number the market rejected, and the average correction was the size of a car, or two. If you set your price by matching your neighbor's ask, you are not copying their home value. You may be copying their mistake.
The only prices that count as evidence are the ones a buyer actually paid and a lender actually financed. Closed sales. Everything else, asks, estimates, what a house down the street went for according to the street's group chat, is noise until verified.
So when a neighbor's sign goes up with a big number on the flyer, the right response is patience. Watch what it closes for. That closing will tell you something real. The flyer tells you nothing yet.
What a real comp analysis actually includes
So what should replace the estimate? A comparative market analysis, done by a person who knows the streets. Here is what mine includes, so you know what to expect and what to demand from any agent.
The last item is the one sellers skip and should not. Two identical sale prices can put very different amounts in your pocket depending on concessions, payoff, and costs. The estimate on a website is a price. You do not spend price. You spend net.
One more standard to hold any agent to, including me: ask them to show their work. If an agent hands you a number without walking you through the exact homes behind it and the adjustments they made, you are getting a guess with a firm handshake. You deserve the reasoning, not just the conclusion.
- Closed sales, not active listings, from the last few months, as close to your street as possible
- Adjustments for the real differences: finished basement, garage size, lot, condition, updates, and what each is worth in your specific area
- School assignment verified at the address level, not assumed from the neighborhood name
- Days on market for each comp, because a home that sold in a weekend and one that sat for three months tell different pricing stories
- Seller concessions on each comp, since a sale recorded at full price with heavy concessions did not really close at full price
- A walk-through of your actual house, because condition cannot be priced from a desk
- A net sheet: your likely sale price minus payoff, costs, and concessions, so you see the number that actually lands in your account
What anchoring to the wrong number costs
Maybe you are thinking: fine, the estimate might be high, but why not start high and come down if I have to? Because in this market, the data says the first weeks decide almost everything, and time on market is expensive.
Per the Columbus MLS, pulled August 10, 2026, covering the previous 90 days, 81 percent of Dublin homes that sold went under contract within 30 days, and the median sale came in at full asking. Priced right, homes here still move fast and hold their number.
Now the other side of the same data. Dublin homes that sat past 90 days closed near 97 percent of asking, and carried seller concessions two to three times more often. So the sellers who started too high did not just wait longer. They ended up cutting to a lower ask, closing below even that, and then giving money back at the closing table on top of it.
This happens because buyers can see your days on market, and they read it as a signal. A fresh listing gets judged on the house. A stale listing gets judged on the sit. Buyers start asking what is wrong with it, and their offers price in a problem that may not even exist.
That is the real cost of anchoring to a website's number. Not embarrassment. Money, in the cut, in the final price, and in the concessions. Starting at the right number is not conservative. In the current numbers, it is how sellers keep the most.
So how do I get the real number?
Keep using Zillow for what it is good at. Watch trends. Enjoy the graph. Just do not price your largest asset with it.
When you are ready for the real number, the process is short. An agent walks your home, pulls true comps, makes the adjustments, verifies the school assignment, checks concessions on every comp, and builds your net sheet. Start to finish, you can have a defensible number, and the reasoning behind it, within a couple of days.
If you want a second layer of certainty, you can also order a pre-listing appraisal from a licensed appraiser for a few hundred dollars. Most sellers do not need one, but for unusual homes, or when spouses or siblings disagree on value, it can be money well spent.
And notice what the real number lets you do that the estimate never can. You can plan with it. You can compare it to your payoff, shop for your next home against it, and decide whether selling even makes sense this year. A guess can start a daydream. Only a real number can start a plan.
I will show you the comps myself
No two houses are the same, and no two situations are either. I have told homeowners their Zillow number was too low, and I have had the harder conversation when it was too high. Both times, what mattered was not the website's number or even my number. It was their net, backed by real closed sales they could see for themselves.
I will run your actual numbers personally. Real comps, the adjustments explained line by line, the school boundaries verified, and a net sheet showing what you would walk away with. If the honest answer is that waiting serves you better, then that is the answer I will give you.
Text me, call me, or email me, whatever is easiest. I am happy to sit at your kitchen table and lay the comps out on it. Free, no obligation, and no pressure to list. You will just finally know your real number.
