Zillow Zestimate published error rates — ~1.9% on-market, ~7.5% off-market; lawsuits; 7th Circuit 2019 sided with Zillow partly because "estimate" was clearly labelled

Claim: Zillow's Zestimate has a published national median error rate of ~1.9% (on-market) and ~7.5% (off-market) — meaning half of off-market estimates are off by more than 7.5%, and in some metros (e.g., Pittsburgh ~11.3%) materially higher.

Zillow has faced lawsuits alleging the Zestimate misled buyers/sellers; courts sided with Zillow (7th Circuit, 2019), partly because it labels the figure an estimate, not an appraisal.

Source: Houwzer (citing Zillow methodology); GeekWire (7th Circuit case).

Confidence: Verified.

Why this matters for Candid: Worked example for how labelling protects you. The legal defence rested on honest framing — see R6 — Every published number gets a label (what it is) and a vintage (how fresh); the Zestimate defence depends on it. Companion to the calculator brief: same principle in the customer-facing-calculators world, see R3 — Label every published estimate as an estimate, and show its vintage prominently.