Opting out of a Zestimate

Correction to the following: Spencer from Zillow has commented below, and here's what he has said: What you're referring to is the DoJ ruling with respect to Virtual Office Websites. The settlement allows sellers (via their listing agents) to opt out of having their listings on websites with valuations. But VOWs are password protected broker websites. Zillow is not a VOW and is not affected by this policy at all. If the seller or the listing agent puts a listing onto Zillow -- either manually, or through their broker sending Zillow a feed, or in some cases through their MLS sending a feed to Zillow -- it will have a Zestimate. In fact, all homes on Zillow have a Zestimate, whether it's listed for sale or not. If you ever see a for sale home on Zillow without a Zestimate, that's because for some reason we couldn't match the address for that listing, not because we removed the Zestimate.Here's a great video for real estate professionals about the Zestimate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuloq6S6MLM

Original post: If your home is listed for sale on a multiple listing service, you can now opt out of having a Zestimate (Zillow's estimate of value) on Zillow.com, or on any other site such as Redfin or Trulia that has home value estimates and allows comments. This is accomplished through a simple key stroke when your Realtor adds your listing to the multiple listing service.

This is a good thing as we've never known just how these sites' algorythms calculate value data. Their dollar values for specific properties are often quite different -- lower -- from comparable sales data, and of course, Zillow hasn't actually seen the house nor driven through the neighborhood. And who needs somebody's snide comments about your house (unless they're Judy Graff's snide comments) when you're trying to sell it?