How accurate is an online home value estimate?

Any estimate built from area statistics is a range, not a number. Ours is presented as a band with the spread between sources shown, because a single figure implies a precision that public data cannot support for a specific property.

Why does this ask for my ZIP instead of my address?

Because we do not look up parcel records. The estimate uses ZIP-level published statistics, square footage and condition — asking for an address would imply we consulted something we did not.

What moves my home value more than these figures?

Your lot, your street, recent sales of the two or three most comparable homes near you, condition beyond a single word, and whether buyers are currently competing at your price and size. All of them matter more than an area median.

For sellers

What your home is worth, with the error bars.

Every other estimator gives you one confident number and hides how it got there. This one gives you a range from three independent sources, shows you where each of them sits, and tells you plainly what it cannot know.

How selling works The market report

Why a range

One number is a guess wearing a suit.

Three organizations measure Austin housing and none of them agree, because they are measuring different things. That disagreement is information, and hiding it behind an average is the one thing we will not do.

A modeled value is not a sale

Zillow models every home in a ZIP, listed or not. It answers what a typical home there is worth — a question about the housing stock, not about your house.

An asking price is a hope

Realtor.com reports what homes currently listed are asking. Across the metro that runs 4.5% above what homes actually close at.

Your street is not your ZIP

A ZIP can span a five-hundred-thousand-dollar spread. Nothing computed from an area median knows which end of it you are on. An agent who works the street does.

Covering 27 Austin ZIP codes today — the areas where we hold ZIP-level data from more than one independent source. Outside those, we say so rather than serving a metro average as a local figure. See the areas we report on.