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Zillow’s new “Price This Home” feature starts with the Zestimate but then lets homeowners pick comparable sales and listings to come up with a private valuation. (Credit: Zillow)

Zillow is launching a new feature called “Price This Home,” building on its longstanding, computer-generated Zestimate tool by giving homeowners the ability to refine the estimated value of their home by selecting comparable home sales and listings.

Final_PageThe free tool, announced by Zillow tonight, is designed for people who are preparing to sell their homes — giving them a custom, private estimate of their home’s value.

It follows the launch two weeks ago of a similar estimator tool from Redfin, but Zillow has actually been working on “Price This Home” for many months, quietly testing the feature among a small portion of its customer base.

Zillow says “Price this Home” starts with the Zestimate but then lets homeowners select and eliminate comparable homes and listings using their knowledge of the neighborhood and insights into their own homes, using factors like curb appeal, location and interior features. In addition, the tool lets homeowners verify the details of their home and update information such as the number of bedrooms and square footage.

The tool then provides a private estimate to the homeowner. The private “Price This Home” valuation remains separate from the public Zestimate. (Separately, the company this year started offering homeowners the ability to correct facts about their home and see that new information reflected immediately in the Zestimate for their home.)

Redfin says its new estimator tool uses an unprecedented amount of data, including comparable home sales and listings, to predict the value of a home within a 2 percent margin of error on homes listed for sale, and 6 percent for homes that are not for sale. Because the company is an online brokerage, Redfin says it has has full access to large amounts of home data from multiple listing services, in contrast with services such as Zillow that aren’t brokerages.

Zillow’s median error across the country is 7.9 percent for the Zestimate. The company says it’s too early to derive a margin of error for the new Price This Home feature.

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