This is just someone saying what they they think something is worth. Do I need a license before I can say "I think a certain car is only worth $25k instead of $30k"?
I've seen how appraisers appraise, and this comment brought out a laugh.
Their estimate is really no better than Zillow's.
They spend about 15-20 minutes looking at the property. They primarily measure dimensions and look at cosmetic stuff (no "inspection" whatsoever). Then they look at comparables and make an appraisal.
I asked one of them how they handle various items in their appraisal (solar panels, etc). The answer? "I have no idea what to do with those things, so I just ignore them."
The reality is many buyers will value stuff that the appraiser just plain ignores. This causes problems because the seller cannot increase their price due to those items - when it comes time for the buyer to get a loan, the appraisal will come out lower than the sale price and the bank won't approve.
I recall when I bought my house, the real estate agent had access to the appraiser.
Lots and lots of problems with the appraisal business. I don't know how much they make, but it's a good racket to get into that requires minimal work and pays well ($400-800 per appraisal - they spend more time driving to houses than examining them).
Assessments are different from inspections.
I don't really disagree with you though. There would seem to be a difference between someone being directly paid to assess something, perhaps largely based on standard formulas and practices and a web company providing housing estimates with no contractual relationship.
So I would say Zestimates are clearly illegal according to the plain text of the law. However, I suspect this is one of those laws where a judge would find a convoluted reading to support his or her gut opinion that finding Zestimates illegal is ridiculous. I think you could also make a pretty reasonable claim that the freedom to form an opinion about the value of something is an unenumerated, but nonetheless inalienable right, and therefore the law is unconstitutional.
Not a lawyer.
Now, you might argue that there are market based or self-regulated solutions to that, and that's reasonable (fact is that a lot of the industry goes off 'de facto' standards for valuing cars, like KBB), but the fact is that sometimes a government regulation is necessary to prevent anticonsumer or anticompetitive practices, especially in the finance industry.
I can have a website where I give financial advice. If I set up a business to give individual advice I may need some sort of certification.
"...the fact that they offer market-value estimates and 'are promoted as a tool for potential buyers to use in assessing [the] market value of a given property,' shows that they meet the definition of an appraisal under state law. Not only should Zillow be licensed to perform appraisals before offering such estimates"
It can be surprising when seemingly innocuous activities are in fact heavily regulated (cf. Stanford needing to remove all their learning videos from their website).
A valuation or an approximation of value by impartial, properly qualified persons; the process of determining the value of an asset or liability, which entails expert opinion rather than express commercial transactions.
UC Berkeley makes course video content unavailable to public https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768856
Berkeley Removes 20,000 Free Online Videos to Comply with DOJ Ruling https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13815764
Still has that blistering audio though, wish somebody would regulate that to a lower volume. :)
If this is a regulated activity, it absolutely shouldn't be. This reminds me of the absurd barber regulations.
having a de facto monopoly on what's considered a fair value, rightly or wrongly, opens up bank people and real estate agents to all kind of manipulation.
by manipulating their equation they can help lowball the sales price of an entire area, they can both profit directly out of this, indirectly through stock manipulation and even cause trouble to the whole banking sector devaluing mortgadget properties
the housing sector is very, very delicate.
And only allowing state licensed appraisers to give value estimates does exactly what you are trying to avoid. It creates a state owned monopoly on housing estimates.
Zillow would lose credibility and it would hurt the core of their business if it was found that they company was purposely deceiving people about the value of their homes so that they could directly profit from it. They might also open themselves up to legal repercussions in that case for just plain old fraud as well.
If a licensed appraiser acts fraudulently, you have grounds to sue their hinders off.
https://www.appraisalfoundation.org/imis/TAF/About_Us/TAF_Bo...