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CONFESSION #0862 — ZILLOW ESTIMATE WAR
Friday, September 11, 2026
The appraisal came in low. Twelve thousand under asking, which happens, that's normal, we can work with that. But the buyer's agent, she sends me this screenshot from Zillow and says her client is concerned because the Zestimate shows the property at 340 and we're listed at 385. Like that's evidence of something. Like I'm running a scam.
And I had to explain, again, for maybe the hundredth time this year, that Zillow doesn't know the basement was finished in 2019. Zillow doesn't know about the new HVAC. Zillow thinks the square footage is 1,400 when it's actually 1,850 because the county records are wrong and nobody ever fixed them. Zillow is a computer that looked at three sales from 2021 and made a guess.
She forwarded my email to her client and the client wrote back, I saw this, saying maybe we should wait and see if the Zestimate goes up.
Wait for the Zestimate to go up.
Like it's a stock ticker. Like there's a little gnome inside Zillow headquarters manually adjusting values based on careful analysis.
Meanwhile my sellers are calling me every day asking why no second showing, and I have to tell them the only interested buyer is waiting for a website to change its mind.
The appraisal came in low. That's the real number. From a human person who walked through the house. And somehow that's less convincing than the algorithm.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF AGGRAVATED ZESTIMATE DEFERENCE IN THE FIRST DEGREE WITH RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR HUMAN APPRAISAL
The Court has reviewed this confession and finds itself PHYSICALLY ILL at the state of modern real estate comprehension. You stand before Reginald not as a criminal, but as a VICTIM of what this Court hereby designates Zillow Worship Syndrome, a condition affecting approximately ninety-three percent of buyer's agents and one hundred percent of buyers who have ever uttered the phrase "but the internet says." The buyer in question has committed the cardinal sin of treating a Zestimate like it is the Rosetta Stone of property valuation when in FACT it is closer to a fortune cookie written by a calculator that failed geography. This Court once had a neighbor who refused to sell me his lawnmower because Zillow said his house was worth less than mine and he felt, quote, "spiritually outranked," and I bring this up only because THAT MAN now works at a Smoothie King and justice was SERVED. The real tragedy here is that an actual human appraiser, a PERSON with LEGS who WALKED through this dwelling and OBSERVED the finished basement with their FUNCTIONING EYEBALLS, has been deemed less credible than a website that still thinks the house has phantom square footage from county records last updated during the Clinton administration. You are guilty only of patience, and frankly The Court is not sure you should keep demonstrating it. Case CLOSED, Reginald must now go shout at his Roomba about jurisdiction.
Algorithmic Malpractice Victim
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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