In recent years many people have used Zillow and Trulia in the Tri-Cities or when moving to the Tri-Cities (Richland-Kennewick-Pasco) area and like the user interface. But so many times I have clients that I meet that have listings they want to see from Zillow and or Trulia, (By the way Zillow is in the process of acquiring Trulia) only to find out that the listings have sold or contain erroneous information. Most of the time the information is even weeks or months old or older. That is because Zillow and Trulia are not connected directly to the MLS. Another complaint from clients is the accuracy of "Zestimates " Zillows proprietary algorithm designed to give you an estimate of what a home is worth, an automated valuation model, AVM for short. In our area especially, because they have limited data they are wildly inaccurate, some off 40% or more, both low and high and should never be relied upon. There are so many intricacies to determining a home's value, that require expert evaluation and consideration and due diligence, especially when it comes to Luxury Homes.
Both these situations are about to get worse. The company, ListHub, that has provided Zillow with a great deal of its syndicated data as of April 7th, 2015 is no longer going to do so. So now Zillow/Trulia's plan is to "reach out" to agents, brokers and MLS's to have them send their data to Zillow and Trulia, so they can turn around and charge agents for advertising the agent's data on their sites. What?? Personally I don't see this happening and in my opinion if you think the data was inaccurate before...it's about to get a lot worse.
This site www.shyhomes.com however is connected to the local Tri-Cities, WA MLS, which means that you have ALL the latest up to the minute information at your disposal. And you can always call or email us to get an accurate estimate of your homes value, as well as to easily find out what homes are selling for or have sold in your neighborhood.
