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Declining Home Values in Tucson and Zestimates

June 11, 2009 | By Kelley Koehler | Filed Under Home Buying, Market Discussion 

Excerpt from my inbox: "The Zestimate dropped $5000!  Should I still buy the house?"

Zestimates, for those of you not hip to the lingo, are estimates of home values from Zillow.  Zillow isn’t a bad place, a decent starting point.  However, it isn’t as accurate as I can usually be – I’m not an automated system, after all.  And by their own calculations, the median error in Pima County is 9.5% – meaning half the homes sold were within 9.5% of the zestimate and half were further off.

So am I worried about one house’s zestimate dropping $5k?  Not so much.

Look – we know prices are still declining in Tucson – in some price brackets faster than others.  If you’re wanting to flip a house or sell it in 6 months, then yeah, $5k might matter.  But those of us that live in homes for 5, 7, 10 years…

We’d all like to save that $5000.  But if I’ll spend $850 in rent for 6 months waiting for prices to bottom out, then where did I really save that?  Buying now isn’t the right choice for everyone.  But for some of us, it still makes sense.  Declining Zestimate or not.

Tucson market stats will be posted tomorrow… stay tuned!

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