Yesterday Zillow released its’ Seattle Real Estate Trends for the third quarter (July, August, September) of 2008 and posted that Seattle home values decreased -7.53% compared to the third quarter of 2007.  As a point of comparison, Zillow reported that home values Nationally decreased -9.7% for the same quarter.

 

I clicked through the links: Seattle Real Estate Trends, to Click for Seattle values and, on the left under Seattle, the Excel icon  , I found 5 tabs at the bottom of the page. There was a “Summary”, “Metro Area & County”, “City”, “Neighborhood”, and “Glossary”.  I found the information shown under City and Neighborhood to be the most interesting as the values data that Zillow has compiled is broken down to what most Seattle home buyers and Seattle home sellers will find the most interesting; their particular neighborhood or city. 

 

These numbers are “Year over Year” of the “% change for the Zillow Home Value Index or “Zindex” over the last year (12 months)”.  In other words, Zillows “Zestimate“, the median value for homes for in that area, and the percent less value compared to last years’ Zestimate median value.

 

Now, these Zillow numbers are not just the actual sales based numbers like the numbers calculated by the NWMLS, although actual sales data is used by Zillow as a part of calculating Zestimates, so they are a model for comparing value.  This makes the numbers a good tool for understanding value and comparing value, but are not the only way to measure an individual homes’ value.

 

A snapshot of Year over Year % for a few areas/neighborhoods of current interest to me (as well as current and recent clients) are: