Zillow Shows Home Prices Still Falling

Realtors generally do not like Zillow, for several reasons but because they use an algorithm to work out pricing for every home, this provides a range for each home and produces a "Zestimate" with the median of that range. However, they have no knowledge of the home they are pricing, which is where your local Realtor comes in handy as they know the local market, have an understanding of improvements you have made, such as upgrades to bathrooms and kitchens and they have probably seen most of the homes which have sold and can give you a better estimate of the price the home will sell for and needs to be marketed at. Zillow has no idea what upgrades have been done or the level of upgrade, so their pricing mechanism whilst improving is still not as accurate as a Realtor's knowledge, but many consumers check Zillow and other sites like it to see what the price should be on a home before making an offer. It is always good to know what these sites are saying about your home, especially before you list it for sale or before you write an offer.

However, Zillow over the years has been improving, and they are continually gathering data on sales and home prices. I checked today for 19087 to see how the local market has stood up to the housing crisis, according to Zillows data. Year on year prices fell by about 3.9%, over the previous month by about 0.8% slowing as prior to the previous quarter it was about a 2.2% drop.

However, last year the housing market started the year strong and it seems to be following the same course this year. Several homes have gone under agreement very quickly that came on the market this week at all price levels. This implies home buyers have greater confidence in the buying a home and that they are able to secure financing allowing them to make purchases. It suggests the inventory of homes on the market will decrease, which we are already seeing, and prices whilst not increasing dramatically may begin to stabilize. Many believe we have reached the bottom of the market and we are seeing investors stepping in and buying homes they see as strong investments. This is happening all along the Main Line, not just in Radnor.