Zillow announces upgrade to home valuation tool

Seattle-based Zillow, which introduced automated home valuations known as “Zestimates” several years ago, said it has improved and expanded they way it evaluates homes, its third major overhaul since 2006.

According to Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, the company’s third algorithm allows the company to evaluate 97 million homes (up from 72 million) while being 33 percent more accurate.

“As with our previous two algorithms, now we’ll start tweaking the algorithm to fix all the little issues that Zillow users find and researching entirely new approaches that will, in time, become version number four of our valuation algorithm,” Humphries wrote.