Former Zillow CEO lists home for nearly $8M above Zestimate
Spencer Rascoff, a co-founder and former CEO of Zillow, is trying to sell the Los Angeles home he purchased in 2016 for $24M
Zillow and Jenna Bascom for Inman
by Patrick Kearns
Spencer Rascoff, a co-founder and former CEO of Zillow, is trying to sell the Los Angeles home he purchased in 2016 for $24 million.
Spencer Rascoff, a co-founder and the former CEO of Zillow Group listed his Brentwood Park, Los Angeles home for $24 million on Thursday, which is nearly $8 million more than the Zestimate, Zillow's often-maligned automated valuation model says the home is worth, as first reported by The Real Deal.
The Zestimate for Rascoff's home is listed at $16.1 million for the property, but it does acknowledge an estimated sales range between $13.23 million and $21.62 million. And to be fair, Zillow's own model acknowledges, "The list price and Zestimate for this home are very different, so we might be missing something."
Zillow has invested heavily in improving the Zestimate, launching a two-year, $1 million contest to improve the tool. Over the summer, the company announced the tool can now use photos when valuing homes, bringing the error rate below 2 percent, meaning half of all Zestimates fall within 2 percent of the home's eventual sale price.
Still, the tool has drawn ire from some real estate agents, who feel it often puts them in the unfair position of defending their own comparative market analysis versus a tool that hasn't actually been inside the home. It's also been at the center of an anti-trust lawsuit against Zillow.
It's also not the first time the Zestimate has failed to capture the value of Rascoff's home. In 2016, Rascoff sold his Seattle-area home for $1.05 million, which was 40 percent less than the Zestimate said the home was worth. This time, it's flipped, with the Zestimate valuing the home far lower than Rascoff, who is represented in the listing by Josh and Matthew Altman with Douglas Elliman.
Rascoff first purchased the six-bedroom, nine-bathroom mansion in the affluent Brentwood Park neighborhood of Los Angeles for $19.7 million in 2016, according to public records. In the time since purchasing the home, Rascoff stepped back as CEO, but still serves on the company's board of directors.
In 2019, Rich Barton, also a co-founder of the Seattle-based real estate technology company, returned as CEO. Rascoff had served in the role since 2010 and guided the company through its initial public offering and the launch of its top revenue driver, Zillow Offers.
Rascoff, meanwhile, is working to launch a company called Dot.LA, which is a news service aimed at covering the Southern California technology scene.
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