It sucks that your house is sitting, but the estimates are definitely not crap around my neighborhood. Like I said, it was within a thousand or so bucks when it was appraised and I saw the comps on my appraisal and know homes are going for a bit more than the online estimates. Stuff is still selling fast here as long as the house has zero issues. You normally don't see sale signs up more than a few weeks when you do see them.
Not only that, but after getting home I found a nice letter from the county tax office telling me my house was appraised at 175K.
Bastards. I knew it would go up and that it would be hard to argue given how much homes have been selling for, but they usually appraise well below market value so that it's hard to argue. Luckily, I have my closing papers where I paid 20K less than their claim, so I can take that to the tax office and talk them down.
So yeah, Zillow is definitely not the gold standard and they will get it wrong more than they get it right, but it's been consistent with the Denton market for the 1+ years I've actually been watching it. I would really only move forward with the idea once I'm confident an actual appraisal would put me at 20% equity.
And yeah, @
datlas I'm definitely not trying to use my equity as an ATM as that is an awful idea. It blows my mind that we as a country got suckered into that being a common practice. I'm just looking forward to when I can stop paying the PMI required for FHA loans.