Zestimate guide
Is Zillow valuing your home with the wrong town’s comps?
The most common hidden distortion in the Zestimate: “comparable” sales pulled from a different municipality than yours.
Buyers price your town on its own terms — its schools, its taxes, its lines on a map. The algorithm doesn't always. When the Zestimate borrows “comparable” sales from a neighboring municipality, your home quietly inherits their market. It's the most common distortion we see, and almost nobody checks for it.
Why cross-town comps wreck an estimate
Two homes a mile apart can belong to completely different markets when a municipal line runs between them. School district, tax rate, flood zone, zoning, walkability — any of these can move price per square foot dramatically. So when even a few comps come from the wrong side of that line, the estimate drifts toward a market your buyers will never price you in.
ClearComp™: see the gap directly
This is exactly what ClearComp was built for. It starts from the full comparable-sales pool, then shows your value with and without the sales from outside your municipality — so you can see, in dollars, what the out-of-town comps are doing to your number. If there's a drag, ClearComp names it and sizes it.
How to check it yourself
- Write down 4–6 recent sales you would defend as true comps — same municipality, similar size and condition.
- Compare their price-per-square-foot to what your Zestimate implies. A big gap suggests outside sales are in the mix.
- Scan recent nearby sales that sit in a different town or a clearly different neighborhood — those are your suspects.
- Document the contrast: your same-town comps vs. the out-of-town sales dragging the average.
How to fight it
Report the mismatched comps and submit your same-municipality evidence; correct any facts that make your home look like it belongs to the cheaper set. The full process is in the correction guide. To see your own ClearComp gap in a minute, run a free audit.
Audit your Zestimate — free.
Run your address through an independent audit. We check the facts on file, compare every public AVM, and run ClearComp™ to show whether out-of-town comps are dragging your number — in plain English, no sign-up.
Run my free audit →Frequently asked questions
Can I see which comps Zillow used for my home?
Not fully — Zillow doesn't publish the exact comp set behind a Zestimate. That opacity is the problem. You can infer it by comparing your own same-municipality comps against the estimate, which is what ClearComp does systematically.
What’s the difference between a neighborhood and a municipality?
A municipality is the legal town or city (with its own taxes, schools, and records); a neighborhood is informal. Markets price largely by municipality, so comps that cross that boundary are the riskiest.
Does reporting bad comps to Zillow work?
Results vary. Reporting errors and documenting better comps can help, especially combined with fact corrections, but there's no guaranteed override. A clear evidence sheet is your best leverage.