Zillow Made a Mistake Buying Homes

Here’s why Zillow shuttered their home-buying program at the end of 2021

Something happened at the end of 2021 that you might not have heard about. Many people visit one platform when they look for available properties. The name of that platform is Zillow, and for the last few years, they have been not only marketing homes but also buying them.


Zillow would make an offer on a property without seeing it, close that transaction, and send someone out to renovate it. They were buying and rehabbing houses all over the country, but at the end of 2021, they shut down that program.

At the end of the day, nothing can replace a seasoned agent.

It’s funny because clients used to bring up Zillow’s estimate at listing appointments. To me, those numbers felt like they were as much as 25% over or 35% below the actual price. It was interesting when Zillow announced that they would start buying properties based on these estimates.


After a couple of years of trying this, it turns out Zillow was losing money on almost every house they bought. They obviously hadn’t gone the right way with their algorithm. At the end of the day, nothing can replace a seasoned agent who knows the market, lives in the area, and works in it every day.


On top of that, every market is different, and every market changes. It can depend on what’s in the newspaper that day or what announcements were recently made. There are just too many pieces for an algorithm to put it all together. It was interesting to see if Zillow could succeed, but they couldn’t, and that’s why you still need to depend on your local experts.


If you have any questions, or if you truly want to know what your home is worth, please call or email me. I’d be happy to do a home valuation for you.

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How Buyers Can Navigate This Market

Here are some tips and strategies to help you make offers in this market.

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Today I’m talking about how buyers in this market can navigate multiple-offer situations. 

So you're a buyer looking for a home, and maybe you work Monday through Friday, 8 p.m. to 5 p.m., and your agent texts you at 10 p.m. saying the perfect house just hit the market. If you've been a buyer for a little while in this market, you've probably gotten to that house at 6 a.m. only to find that it's already sold. We’re seeing buyers getting burned out from things like this. How do you handle that?

I always want to inspect a house before putting an offer on it. Any Arkansas real estate association contract is going to have an inspection period. If a good house hits the market at 10 a.m. but you can't get there until 5:30 p.m., go ahead and write the offer at whatever price you're comfortable with. It may get rejected or thrown out, but at least you're on the hunt.

"We’re seeing buyers getting burned out from things like this."

Write the offer contingent upon your inspection. Having an inspection doesn't mean you have to find something majorly wrong with the house to walk away from that contract. Your inspection can be you walking in and saying that the bedroom's too small, the layout doesn't work, or the kitchen's just not exactly what you wanted. The inspection contingency is a strategy that we have used in the past, and it works out very well, especially in a hot market like today.

Another trick we have is when you write an offer, be flexible on the closing date. If you can tell a seller that once we close you’ll give them X more days to move out, that won’t cost you any money, and it will make your offer look so much better. If you have kids, write a letter to the seller about how you can see your kids playing in the backyard and all those memories being made. A heartfelt letter will go a long way with an offer as well.

If you have any real estate questions, reach out to me and let me know; my cell phone number is (870) 919-4968. If you're thinking about buying or selling, I’m here to help. Have a blessed day, and we'll talk soon.

What Low Inventory Means for Buyers & Sellers

Here’s what our low inventory means for buyers and sellers.

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What’s the latest news from our Jonesboro real estate market? The biggest challenge we’re

facing is inventory. There aren’t enough homes on the market to meet demand. That means

if a home comes on the market that you’re interested in and fits all your criteria, you need to jump

on it. You have to get after it, because if you don’t, someone else will. If you’re a seller, this means

you can probably ask whatever you want in terms of price. Due to this lack of inventory, we’re

seeing houses sell for more money than I’ve ever seen before. 

Another reason resale home prices are surging is that lumber prices for new construction homes

have gone through the roof. In fact, just about everything you see on a new construction home has

increased in price dramatically. If new construction homes cost between $140 and $150 per square

foot, sellers who perhaps paid $120 per square foot for their current homes can now ask for $125

to $130 per square foot.

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      I always used to say that real life is not like HGTV, but guess what? Now it is.

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This obviously isn’t great news for buyers, but the silver lining is that you can lock in a ridiculously low interest rate right now. It seems like I’ve been talking about this for the past 15 years. Every time we think rates can’t possibly get any lower, they do. We’re seeing 15- and 30-year fixed rates as low as 2.9%, 2.5%, and even 2.1%. Although you’ll have to pay more for a home, some of the cost is offset by how low your monthly mortgage payment will be. 

In addition to being ready to jump on the next suitable listing, have your pre-qualification letter in-hand when you visit it because there’s an agent in front of you and an agent behind you showing that home. We recently listed a couple of homes that literally had lines outside their doors mere hours after going live on the market. I never thought I’d see that here in Jonesboro. I always used to say that real life is not like HGTV, but guess what? Now it is. As always, make sure you get in touch with a great real estate agent so they can guide you through the home-buying process. 

If you’d like to know what your home is worth or have questions about our Jonesboro market, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to help you.

Why Elam Enterprises Is One of Our Preferred Vendors

Eric Lehman from Elam Enterprises is here to answer a few questions about their business. You’ll see why they’re one of our preferred vendors today. 

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I’m here today with Eric Lehman of Elam Enterprises. Eric is one of our preferred vendors. I moved here in the fourth grade, and Elam Enterprises was everywhere. They do fire restoration, clean up water issues, and more. Eric is going to answer a few questions for us today. What other services does Elam Enterprises offer? We do a lot of cleaning, from carpet cleaning to tile cleaning to cleaning the air ducts in your home. We also clean dryer vents. Not only does that help with the drying of your clothes and prolong the life of your dryer, it also helps prevents fires. When we clean the ductwork, that helps you breathe easier by getting rid of allergens and things like that. We also do general cleaning in your home. Everybody who has a house, even me, gets dirty baseboards and dust piled on top of their ceiling fans. We’ll come in and do that deep cleaning for you. If you are post-construction or have a project or remodel you recently finished, we’ll come in, tidy things up, and get it back to where you were.

Cleaning the air ducts in your home can help you breathe easier by removing allergens.

Is this cleaning service something I can schedule weekly or is it a one-time thing? We do a one-time cleaning, it’s not something we really set up on a weekly basis. People can call in and schedule their service. We do have a half-day minimum for our cleaners. As far as carpet cleaning goes, we’ve got vans going out for that daily, so just call and schedule that whenever. Can you tell us a little bit about the special you are running? It’s 350 square feet for $89.99, correct? Yes. We’ll come out and measure what rooms you want. For example, if you just want high-traffic areas cleaned and you don’t want to move big furniture around, we’ll divide the square footage by two so that you can really stretch that. You can get 350 square feet and clean your living room, hallway, and bedroom. If you want just the living room done, we’ll measure it out and give you a price before we start cleaning. What about area rugs? Do you do on-site cleaning or is there somewhere for people to drop off their rugs? That depends on the size of the rug. We can clean it on-site. We can also come out and pick it up if you have a large rug and you don’t have the means to deliver it. If you can deliver the rug, we do have in-house rug cleaning at our warehouse. You will get a 20% discount on the cleaning of that rug, and we’ll deodorize that as well. Anne and I built a house a few years ago with acid-stained concrete floors. We noticed that our furniture stayed dusty because there wasn’t any carpet around to catch all that. Is that something you notice in houses like that? We are going to put more rugs down, but you do have to be more careful with air filters, don’t you? Allergens can get in the duct-work. We will bring our air duct cleaning equipment and take care of that for you. We have a roto-brush system that goes through each of your vents. We’ll hit the return air and fill the entire unit with an antimicrobial disinfectant to clean the system. That disinfectant really helps with allergies and stuff like that. I’d like to thank Eric for taking the time to talk with me today. I know that Elam Enterprises has helped many families with their cleaning services. People had sick kids who had a bug they just couldn’t seem to get over only to find that they got better once the air ducts were cleaned. These services make a big difference. Elam Enterprises has been serving Northeast Arkansas for over 47 years. That’s why we partner with them. They believe in this area, and so do we. If you have any questions for Eric or would like to schedule some cleaning with Elam Enterprises, you can reach them at 870-935-4452 or at www.elam-enterprises.com. As always, if you have any real estate questions for me, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!

What to Expect From the Fourth Quarter Real Estate Market

What can you expect from the Jonesboro real estate market in the fourth quarter of 2017?

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It is now officially October. A lot of people think that the real estate market slows down in October, November, and December. After all, it’s the holiday season. 

However, we actually see an uptick at this time of year. 

Right now, we have 20% less inventory than we normally do heading into the fourth quarter. Inventory has dropped significantly compared to this time last year. 

October, November, and December are more like June, July, and August in our market.

Last year, October, November, and December were more like June, July, and August. They were just really great months. 

We don’t expect that to change this year. It’s a great time to put your house on the market. You may not get as many showings, but you will get better quality showings with more serious buyers. 

If you are interested in buying or selling in the last quarter of 2017, just give us a call or send us an email with any questions. We would be happy to help you!

Your Latest Jonesboro Market Update

What is happening in our local real estate market? Inventory is still low, and buyer demand is on the rise.

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What does our real estate market look like today?

Right now, there are 850 properties listed in the Jonesboro area. If you go back 12 months, there were 847 homes on the market, so there is not a lot of difference in our overall inventory.

Every day, buyers tell us that they are having a hard time finding exactly what they want. So, even though inventory may be the same, there are more buyers on the market than there were a couple months ago.

We are turning over every stone to find homes for our buyers.

If you’re considering selling your home, now is a great time to do so, as there are a lot of buyers out there looking for a home. Buying a home can be challenging in our current market, but we’re turning over every stone and looking for properties that might be for sale but don’t have a sign in the yard.

If you have any questions about how to navigate our current market, just give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!

Are We In a Seller's Market in Jonesboro?

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Are we in a seller's market or a buyer's market? This is a question that I hear quite often. We're in the thick of the summer market, and because of the amount of growth we're seeing, I think that almost 75% of the market is a seller's market. 

If you're in an area that's experiencing a lot of demand from buyers, I suggest that you get your home on the market quickly before other properties flood the area. Now is your chance to get top dollar for your home, and these market conditions right now will allow that.

If you're buying, you have a wonderful opportunity to purchase an affordable home. Interest rates are lower than ever, and you stand to make a very good investment right now.

If you would like to know more about real estate in your specific Jonesboro neighborhood, please don't hesitate to contact me!