Zillow Will Give You $1 Million To Improve Its Zestimates

Have you ever looked up home values on Zillow Group, Inc. Z and noticed they were much higher or lower than anticipated? You are not alone.

The lack of accuracy from Zillow’s "Zestimates" tool, which quickly appraises the value of homes nationwide, has been under fire from realtors and individuals who have claimed the widely used tool has limited the value of eventual home sales.

Several lawsuits have been filed against Zillow because of the lack of accuracy of Zestimates. According to the Chicago Tribune, Barbara Andersen sued the company, claiming Zillow's automatic appraisal tool, Zestimate, undervalued her property and has impeded its sale.

While the company said the lawsuits claims are without merit, Zillow is on a mission to improve the tool that appraises nearly 110 million homes in the U.S.

Zillow Prize

To do so, the company is launching a $1 million competition among data scientists, called “Zillow Prize,” to improve its Zestimates home valuation tool.

Zillow has said its Zestimates tool continues to improve, it is now within five percent of eventual home sale prices, up from 14 percent when it first launched in 2006.

“Zestimates are estimated home values based on 7.5 million statistical and machine learning models that analyze hundreds of data points on each property [...] Zillow Prize, a competition with a one million dollar grand prize, is challenging the data science community to help push the accuracy of the Zestimate even further. Winning algorithms stand to impact the home values of 110M homes across the U.S.,” said the company in a press release.

The contest will hold two rounds: the qualifying round opens on May 24, and the private round for the 100 top qualifying teams is set for February 2018.