Will Zillow Buy My House?

Short answer: no. Zillow used to buy houses directly through a program called Zillow Offers. Zillow’s board voted to wind that program down on November 2, 2021, and the wind-down was finished as of September 30, 2022. That is not a rumor or an industry guess — it is what Zillow reported in its own annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If you are looking at a Zestimate and waiting on Zillow to make you an offer, that offer is not coming.

What Zillow still does is show you a number. That number is the Zestimate, and it is worth understanding exactly what it is — and what it is not — before you make a decision about your house.

A Zestimate Is Not an Offer — Zillow Says So Too

Zillow describes the Zestimate as a transparent, free starting point, and states plainly that it is not an appraisal and cannot be used in place of one. A starting point is not a price, and it is certainly not money on the table.

Zillow also publishes how far off it tends to be. The nationwide median error rate is 1.78% for homes actively listed for sale, and 7.20% for off-market homes. If your house is not currently listed — which is the situation almost everyone is in when they look up their Zestimate out of curiosity — the 7.20% figure is the one that applies to you.

On a $250,000 house, 7.20% is roughly $18,000. And median means half the time it is off by more than that. That is the distance between a number on a screen and a number somebody will actually hand you at a closing table.

Your county assessment has the same blind spot for the same reason — nobody from the assessor’s office has been inside your house either. More on how the two numbers differ: what is my house worth?

What an Algorithm Cannot See About Your House

A valuation model works from public records, MLS data, and whatever details have been submitted about your home. It has never been to your address. Nobody drove past it. Nobody walked through it. Nobody opened a closet or looked at the crawl space.

• The roof you replaced two years ago — or the one that has been patched twice
• The HVAC that died last summer and never got fixed
• The addition that was built without a permit, so it never made it into the record
• Water in the crawl space, or a foundation that has moved
• The kitchen you gutted and finished yourself
• Whether the house has been sitting empty, and for how long

Some of that would push the number up. Some of it would push the number down. A model cannot tell the difference, because it has never seen any of it.

What a Real Cash Offer Looks Like

I come to the property. We walk through it together. You show me what has been done to it and what still needs doing, and I tell you what I can pay and how I arrived at that number. That conversation happens in person, at your house — not through a form on a website and not from an office in another state.

There is no obligation attached to any of it. You can hear the number and tell me no. What you will have is a real figure from a real local buyer who has actually stood in your house, on a closing date you choose.

If you would rather see the math before we ever meet, I wrote out exactly how I calculate a cash offer, with no black box.

Selling a House in Louisville and Southern Indiana

I am based in Charlestown, Indiana, and I buy houses on both sides of the river — Louisville, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, New Albany, and throughout Clark County and the surrounding counties.

A national valuation model is averaging across the entire country. It is not accounting for what a specific street in Jeffersonville is doing this month, or what a comparable house in Charlestown actually closed at. That is the kind of thing a local buyer knows because he works here, and it is a large part of why the number I give you and the number on your screen are rarely the same.

Questions People Ask Before They Call

• How much do we-buy-houses companies actually pay?
• Is selling to a cash home buyer a scam?
• Cash offer vs. listing with an agent — which is right for my house?
• What are the Opendoor and iBuyer alternatives around here?
• How does the process actually work?

A conversation is free and there is zero pressure. If selling to me is not your best move, I will tell you that straight.