Zillow.com has been around for a few years, but only recently has offered thorough information on the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County area.  On Zillow you can look up the estimated value of (just about) any house in this area.  But the question, of course, is how valid are these estimates by Zillow? 

I performed a brief analysis for a client on the Greendale subdivison.  Thus, admittedly, this is quite a small sample size.  Perhaps I'll expand it further soon to see how Zillow performs in other areas when estimating the value of properties in the City of Harrisonburg.



The above analysis considers arms length sales from the past year in Greendale subdivision located in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  This does not include REO sales (bank owned) or short sales.  A few observations....

1. On average, Zillow's estimates of value were 3% above the market, while the local tax assessor was only 2% above the market.
2. Both Zillow and the local assessor were right within 10% of actual market value.

In theory, per the above information, you could take either your home's tax assessment or ZIllow Zestimate and then add and subtract 10% to guess at the value of your home.