If true and you can prove it, this may be valuable information in prosecuting Zillow for some pretty illegal and perverted stuff. I hope you will share this information with someone who can punish Zillow for this.
Punish zillow for what? Seems to be a confusion between something would benefit me/may harm me and the other side having any sort of obligation to consider your position.
An inaccurate estimate from someone who you paid nothing and whom owes you nothing may make your life more difficult but this doesn't imply they owe you anything.
Market manipulation is illegal. Whether or not there's a business relation between buyer and Zillow or seller and Zillow is immaterial. All the DA needs is an initial suspicion that someone related to Zillow profited from the manipulation.
What market manipulation? First we haven't seen proof that zillow's zestimate is effecting real prices. Presumably after initial research stages people have an actual assessor come in before closing.
Then you have to show that they profited from such manipulation rather than you know from ads.
It looks more like they changed their algorithm and rather than show imaginary swings in the value of homes revised their historical projections. This makes tons of sense if you understand the historical data to mean this was what the property was worth in 2010 as opposed to in 2010 this is what we thought it was worth.
In fact this interpretation is the logical one. Nobody cares what zillow thought in 2010 they care what the historical value was.
