Oh, I understand that, Brian. It can seem weird for sure and there are certainly some properties that have a slight miss on this. But "in general", they have been refining things from the massive amount of data they have available to them and seem to be confident enough that in some markets, they will buy the property for the ZEstimate outright. Our current property's ZEstimate spiked up a bit awhile ago, but settled back to within the range that our RE agent felt was valid. When we do list, it will be at the high end of the range...maybe $20-30K above the current ZEstimate and we'll adjust accordingly based on activity. But to the point of this thread...the RE market is really whacky right now. You could very well sell your place for more than the $392K ZEstimate if your local market is running hot and it has desirable features. There are a lot of folks who want to buy a first home, "move up" from their first home or like us, "downsize" but stay nice. That's three different groups vying for the same opportunity. An acquaintance of our RE agent was speaking to him the other day and she was actually getting "sight unseen" offers on some properties she has listed...no visit, no inspections, just straight offers. Crazy it is!
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The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...