Money

The truth about Zillow’s Zestimate

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🙋‍♀️Raising my hand … Hello, everyone. My name is Kim, and I am a Zillow junkie.

I have saved every home I owned, own now and would like to own. It’s fun to track what Zillow thinks the places are worth in what they call a “Zestimate.”

But can you trust it? And if you’re selling, how can you make sure it actually reflects your home’s true value?

How the Zestimate works

Zillow pulls data from public records, recent home sales and market trends. Sounds smart, but it doesn’t account for upgrades, renovations or your home’s condition. (How to fix this is below.)

🔹 The good: If you’re selling a home in a hot market, the Zestimate average error rate is 2.4%. Not bad.

🔹 The bad: If your home isn’t for sale, the error rate jumps to 7.49%.

Here’s a link that shows you the margins of error in cities and states across the country.

Zillow trusted its own algorithm so much that it started buying homes with it. That didn’t end well.

How Zillow’s Zestimate lost them $1B

In 2018, Zillow launched Zillow Offers. The idea? Use the Zestimate to buy homes, fix them up and flip them for a profit. What could go wrong? Well, everything.

The algorithm miscalculated home prices, often overpaying. When the market cooled down in 2021, Zillow suddenly owned thousands of homes it couldn’t sell at a profit. They lost a cool billion dollars.

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Insurance rates rising, here’s what you can do

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My car insurance just jumped 32%. No, I didn’t get into an accident or rack up a few speeding tickets. Since 2020, car insurance rates have skyrocketed by 37%, and in 2024 alone, they climbed another 16.5%. Some states saw hikes of over 50%!

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Make $65 an hour training AI

There’s a new side hustle that pays up to $65 an hour. You’d have no coworkers, you don’t have to leave home and you’re working in the exploding AI field.

If you like working solo and want a flexible remote job, this gig’s for you. It’s called AI training or tutoring. Companies need real people to fact-check AI responses, improve chatbot conversations and help AI recognize objects in images.

Your job? Read a question, compare AI-generated answers and pick the best one.

Want in?

Elon Musk’s company, xAI, is hiring thousands of AI tutors to train its chatbot, Grok.
dataannotation.tech has paid out over $20 million. Jobs start at $20 an hour.
Amazon Mechanical Turk pays less, but it’s generally very consistent.
CrowdGen has a network of more than 1 million remote workers.

Ideal number of bank accounts: Is one bank account enough? Probably not. My pal, Clark Howard, recommends at least two bank accounts, but you may need more if you’re married or use payment apps. Subscribe to Clark’s free newsletter to receive more must-have money tips every day.

Doing taxes this weekend? Fun times. Remember that if you made over $5,000 using apps like Venmo, PayPal and Cash App for your side hustle, you’ll get a 1099-K form. I answer your FAQs about this here. Here are each app’s reporting rules.

$236,835

If you invested $1,000 in Nvidia 10 years ago. If you were smart enough to throw them a grand when they went public in 1999, you’d have $5.2 million. Excuse me while I cry.

💵 A dollar here, a dollar there: It seems like every subscription is more expensive than when I signed up. Use the Rocket Money app to see what you’re paying for. I do! They’ll even cancel a subscription for you if it’s not worth the money anymore.

Avoid these costly mistakes when sending money

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You and a friend split some apps and cocktails. Cash? Nah, payment apps make it way easier. Type in the amount, hit send and boom, you’re set.

But every time you send money, there’s a risk it could end up in the wrong place. That’s why I’m here to help you get it to the right place. Let’s dive in.

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Got a side hustle? Watch out for this tax change

Every morning, I sit down with my amazing executive producer, Madi, to plan what tech tidbits I’m going to bring you in my national radio shows, podcasts and this newsletter. Today, she came in with a doozy.

Her boyfriend got an email with a tax form he wasn’t expecting. Last year, he made about $20,000 on eBay selling comics, some bikes and a few other things. Like most folks getting a 1099‑K for the first time, he has no idea just how much he’ll owe yet.

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✈️ Flying this year? You can save up to 15% when you book on a Sunday. The cheapest day of the week to travel is Wednesday. Now, that alone is worth the price of this newsletter!

💰Need extra cash? Try these easy side hustles. Like meeting new people? Earn up to $50 an hour just hanging with someone on RentAFriend. No dating, nothing weird. If you have a pool, rent it out on Swimply. Some make thousands on weekends. And if you have extra space, sign up for Neighbor to get paid to store other people’s stuff.

Price tags can fool you: Always check the unit price (cost divided by the number of units). On sites like Amazon, it’s in parentheses in tiny letters next to the sale price. This makes comparing prices easier to see if buying in bulk is actually worth it.

Cheap gas? Yes, please: The free Upside app gives you cash back on gas, groceries and dining out. Download Upside and use promo code Kim to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.

7 credit card commandments: Credit cards are a great way to build your credit history and improve your credit score, but they come with some pitfalls. Clark Howard has seven rules (like paying your balance in full each month) for using credit cards. Subscribe to Clark.com’s free newsletter for more must-have money tips.

Grok needs a tutor: Elon Musk is hiring thousands to train the xAI chatbot. You don’t need a degree, but it’s a plus if you have a knack for writing and speak more than one language. Most jobs are temporary full-time and pay $35 to $65 an hour. Check them out here.

Freebie alert: Apps that pay you to play

There are plenty of apps that reward you for doing things you probably already do. I’m sure you’ve seen ads for them. You’re not going to pay your rent from the rewards you earn, but you might get enough perks to make your otherwise pointless scrolling worth it.

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Sky-high car insurance rates? Blame it on all the tech in our cars

My car insurance just went up 32%. Did I have an accident or get a few tickets? Nope. Across the U.S., the average full-coverage car insurance bill went up 25% last year. In some states, it was closer to 40%. Geez.

The main reason? Today’s high-tech vehicles cost way more to repair. You don’t need to own a high-tech car to feel the pinch, though; it’s hitting everyone.

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Carmakers will charge for anything, including your safety

New cars are basically snazzy computers on wheels, packing 1,000 to 3,000 processors. That means we get all kinds of great features, but that’s not all — the more complex our cars get, the more at risk we are. I’m not talking about theft; I mean remote carjacking … or worse.

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Tech to-do: Get your free credit report and look for these mistakes

The other night, I was out to dinner with a friend who works in medical billing. She shared a story that really stuck with me.

One of her coworkers forgot to include a patient’s disability status on a billing report. That disability status covered her medical treatments. When the bills came due, the patient didn’t pay — why would she? The medical office sent thousands of dollars to collections, and it tanked her credit.

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Looking for work? 5 mistakes that will hurt your chances of getting hired

Social media is a place where we can loosen up a little. You can post jokes, silly pictures, or whatever on Instagram, X, Facebook and more. Unlike most social media sites, our sponsor, LinkedIn, is pretty buttoned-up.

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