Looking to buy or sell a home in Athens, Georgia? Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call us at (706) 621-6085 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.
If you have been paying attention to the news recently, you may have heard that Zillow has entered into an agreement to purchase competitor Trulia for $3.5B in stock. These companies make their money by charging Realtors, like us, to become premier agents on their site and to buy ad space. It will be interesting to see what this merger creates, because neither company is profitable, yet their stock prices seem to be high.
These sites are all well and good, but we have a few problems with them that we'd like to let you know about. The first thing to talk about is the "zestimate". The zestimate is a computer generated valuation of a property. The computer uses an algorithm to compute what it thinks a property is worth. We have seen zestimates be right on target, but more often than not we have seen them be way off.
Another problem with these sites is that some of their information and data is inaccurate. It's not uncommon for us to get a call from a client about a property they are interested on Zillow, only to find that it has been sold for weeks and is no longer available.
If you want to have an accurate online home search experience, we have a few sites for you to check out. athenshomesearcher.com and athensareahomesearch.com are two sites that you need to visit. They feed directly from the Athens MLS and are more up-to-date and accurate than Trulia or Zillow.
A home search website is simply a tool for looking at properties and is in no way a substitute for a real estate agent. The reason we say this is because most of the best deals we get for our clients often happen before a property is even listed. When you can sell a property for a client without having to put it on the market and at the same time help a client buy a property without having to compete with other buyers, it's a win-win for all parties involved.
If we can do anything for you, a friend, family, or a co-worker, please feel free to give us a call. We would love to point you in the right direction!
