Can You Trust AI To Price Your Texas Home?

By Linda Welsh

Specialize in representing savvy Buyers and Sellers for residential, second home, vacation properties, lake and hill country properties, new and existing homes, land and lots. Relocation services include area, community and neighborhood expertise and helping the entire family to find the perfect home to meet their needs and wish list.

Are you relying on Zillow to determine the value of your Texas home? Most homeowners turn to automated valuations for a quick answer. But in Texas, those numbers can be misleading, and trusting them could cost you when it comes time to buy, sell, or even plan for property taxes. Here are the key reasons why relying on Zillow or similar platforms can give you the wrong picture.

Incomplete data leads to inaccurate values. Zillow and similar sites use AI and county tax records to estimate home values. But here’s the catch: Texas is a non-disclosure state. That means counties don’t actually know what you paid for your home, what your neighbor paid for theirs, or what improvements have been made. Since the base data is incomplete, the automated valuations built from it can be way off.

We’ve seen this firsthand. One recent listing was priced fairly on the market, yet Zillow’s automated estimate came in 10% to 20% lower than the market price. Why? Because the county records Zillow was pulling from didn’t reflect the real market. In Austin, it’s even trickier; nearly a third of homes are sold off-market, which means their actual sales never show up in public records at all.

Take another example: a property recently closed with a tax valuation of $2 million but sold for $3 million off-market. The buyer knew the home’s worth, but that sale won’t appear in county records or on Zillow. This gap between what the data shows and what buyers are willing to pay is exactly why online valuations in Texas often miss the mark.

Sellers value privacy in off-market sales. Selling off-market comes with clear advantages. For sellers, it often means greater privacy and control, working with trusted agents and private portals to manage who enters their home. Buyers also benefit, gaining access to more accurate sales data shared within agent networks, which can sometimes help keep property tax assessments lower.

Getting access to unlisted homes. At Compass, for instance, we often start with a Private Exclusive listing. This allows sellers to “price test” for two to four weeks without adding days on market. From there, the property may be listed as “Coming Soon” and then added to the MLS, where it is distributed across hundreds of public portals. That phased approach gives sellers more control while keeping options open.

A trusted agent knows the real market. If you’re relying on Zillow to tell you what your Texas home is worth, you may be looking at the wrong number. Automated tools are built on incomplete data in this state, and they can’t replace the insight of a knowledgeable agent who knows the real market, both on and off MLS.

If you have any questions or want me to take a look at your property and give you an honest assessment of what it’s worth today, reach out at (512) 657-4033 or visit www.LindaWelshRealty.com. I’d be glad to help, because when it comes to your biggest asset, accuracy matters more than an algorithm.