Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For

from the sellersmarket.com dept

Real estate site Zillow is getting sued. Again. The company has already been sued for trade secret theft, copyright infringement, and settled multiple lawsuits related to harassment and other workplace violations. This time it's getting sued for handing out a "Zestimate" the plaintiff feels is too low.

Barbara Andersen, an Illinois resident and real estate litigation attorney, is asking the court to force Zillow to take down its estimate of her home's value, which she believes is incorrect.

According to Andersen, Zillow falsely stated her home sold for $685,000 last fall. Most recently, it appraised the home at $562,000, a $90,000 drop in just six months, the lawsuit states.

She says she has repeatedly reached out to Zillow, and written to its legal department seeking removal or amendment of the Zestimate, but her communications were ignored.

Andersen is attempting to make Zillow subject to Illinois real estate law, even though, as she notes in her lawsuit, Zillow doesn't actually perform appraisals. Appraising without a license is illegal in Illinois, but this assertion seems to be undercut by Andersen's quoting of Zillow's extensive disclaimer. From the filing [PDF]:

In describing its "zestimate", Zillow denies that it is an "appraisal". A copy of their webpage description is attached hereto as Exhibit A. However, Zillow concedes that it is an estimate as to market value and is promoted as a tool for potential buyers to use in assessing market value of a given property. As such, despite their disclaimer, Zillow's zestimate meets the definition of an appraisal under Illinois law. As such, Zillow should not be engaging in this business practice without a valid appraisal license and, further, the consent of the homeowner.

But according to the law she cites, Zillow would have to refer to its "zestimates" as appraisals and/or infer that it's licensed in the state to perform appraisals. It doesn't do either of those things. Buyers browsing the site may believe the estimates are actually appraisals, but Zillow doesn't present these as anything other than estimates.

This is a somewhat novel use of state licensing laws against Zillow. Normally, it's been real estate brokers threatening lawsuits or legal action, hoping to lock Zillow out of the local housing market. In this case, though, it's a homeowner who can't sell her house and is hoping to hold Zillow responsible for the lack of interested buyers. Since it's unlikely Zillow is solely to blame for Andersen being unable to make back what she paid for the home, there are more than a few questionable assertions in her complaint.

Since the recession, Andersen has been attempting to sell her home on different occasions. However, a tremendous roadblock to same has been the fact that Zillow posts a "zestimate" of person's homes without their permission, consent and/or any license to do so…

Andersen doesn't explain why she feels Zillow should legally be obligated to obtain permission from homeowners before posting its estimates. Nor does she attempt to link the multiple failed sales attempts with Zillow's zestimates, other than implying (in a very conclusory manner) that price fluctuations in Zillow's listing are keeping buyers away -- even when the "zestimate" was higher than her asking price. She also states she's been doing this "since the recession," which suggests she's been in the process of selling the house for a very long time -- a time where apparently Zillow's estimates were having zero negative effect at all on potential buyers (i.e., when Zillow's estimates aligned better with Andersen's view of the house's value).

Then there's this part, which suggests her inability to sell might be completely unrelated to Zillow's estimate.

[I]n the last months, Andersen decided to lower her asking price and terminate her broker (in order to reduce closing expenses). At approximately that point in time, the zestimate suddenly started to plummet. Now the zestimate is effectively that of the new construction homes described i.e. with no reflection of the superior locale, etc. as noted above.

Correlation isn't causation, but the complaint asks the judge to believe that it is. Andersen's arguments are further undermined by similarly threadbare assertions. For example, this paragraph of the suit suggests Andersen's view of her house's value is perhaps TOO subjective:

After the recession concluded, Glenview allowed new construction. Those homes have approximately the same square footage as Andersen. However, they are located in a less desirable (more condensed homes, busy streets, by Willow Creek Church, by a cemetery and less desirable golf course) and further removed area of the Glen Town Center. The only similarity of these homes is that they gave themselves the label of being located within the Glen.

The suit also contains allegations Zillow lowers estimates when sellers don't use brokers, since one of Zillow's revenue streams is partnerships with brokers. Maybe this is true, but the lawsuit contains nothing that backs up the claim other than stuff like the paragraph above.

Whatever's really happening at Zillow, it's unlikely the site is solely -- or even chiefly -- responsible for any seller's inability to sell their property. Zillow may have a larger share of the estimate market than its competitors, but it's hardly the only company in the business. Andersen claims Zillow will suffer no harm by delisting her property or changing the estimate to reflect her idea of what the asking price should be, but it's hard to see how this could possibly be true. If the site is viewed as being solely reflective of sellers' desired asking prices, it has zero value to anyone looking to purchase a house.

Filed Under: barbara andersen, estimates, home sales, lawsuits, opinions, real estate
Companies: zillow

The State Department Has Taken Over Three Years On A FOIA Request About How Long It Takes To Process FOIA Requests

from the they're-just-messing-with-us dept

Back in 2013, a young Shawn Musgrave filed a FOIA request with the State Department for its cables regarding former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To his surprise, he was given an estimated completion date (ECD) of December 2015 -- a full 18 months of processing time.

Curious about where the agency got that oddly specific number from -- and with plenty of time on his hands -- Shawn filed a follow-up request for any documentation outlining State's methodology for estimating FOIA completion dates. This is on August 5th, 2013, and he gets an acknowledgement back August 8th, just three days later.

Don't get used to that kind of timeliness.

Two months later, he's given his first ECD for this request -- December 2013.

Only a few months of processing, perfectly reasonable for operational manuals that FOIA officers should have easily accessible.

Except apparently not, because come December, he's given a new ECD -- May 2014.

Well, okay, we should cut them some slack -- as they said, there are extenuating factors, and if they feel they need another five months, that shouldn't be too big of a deal, so long as they-

Oh, you've got to be kidding.

December 2014. A full year since the initial filing. Alright, not great, but how much longer could it take, really?

Oh, come on! Now you're just being ridiculous, State -- the original ECD for the Thatcher docs was February 2015. How could this be a month harder to process than that? Why not just go ahead and take the rest of the year if you're feeling swamped.

Wait, no, it was a joke, don't-

Nooooooo. Why are you doing this? Are you just messing with us?

You are just messing us, aren't you!

Come on, that's not even a date!

Alright, that's better.

Wait, no it's not, that's actually much worse -- how could you possibly need until June? You finally released the Thatcher docs that started this whole mess in May!

... Are we dead? Is this Hell?

Noooooooooooooo

It's October 2016. Shawn Musgrave is a sadder and a wiser man. And we are still waiting for the State Department to tell us how long it takes to process its FOIA requests.

Maybe we'll wait forever. Maybe we've always been waiting.

Or maybe the State Department can hire some new FOIA officers already. Jeez.

Republished from Muckrock

Filed Under: estimates, foia, state department

House Reps To James Clapper: No, Really, Stop Ignoring The Question And Tell Us How Many Americans Are Spied On By NSA

from the get-to-it dept

Way back before Ed Snowden became a household name, Senator Ron Wyden kept pushing James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to reveal more details on how the NSA was interpreting certain provisions in the PATRIOT Act to spy on Americans. You probably recall the infamous exchange in a 2013 Senate hearing in which Wyden asked Clapper "does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" and Clapper said "No sir... not wittingly." Snowden himself later noted that this particular exchange was part of what inspired him to leak documents to reporters just a couple months later.

However, that question had some history. Two years earlier, in 2011, we wrote about James Clapper's ridiculous response to a letter from Wyden about this topic. Wyden had asked Clapper to answer some questions about NSA authorities to collect information on Americans and Clapper had refused to answer on the basis of he didn't really want to.

A year later, in the summer of 2012, Wyden got more explicit, saying that he would block the FISA Amendments Act until Clapper gave an estimate of how many Americans had their information sucked up by the NSA. This time, Clapper responded in December of 2012 by saying that it would be impossible to actually say how many Americans had their information scooped up by the NSA. We now know why -- because six months later, Ed Snowden revealed the answer to be "basically everyone." But in December, Clapper sent a letter saying to Wyden:

We cannot provide additional answers to your questions in an unclassified format. Rather than provide you with imprecise, unclassified information, I reiterate our offer to meet with you -- and any other Members of Congress -- in a classified setting to discuss these authorities and answer any questions you might have.

Wyden (along with a few other Senators) pointed out that their question shouldn't reveal anything classified:

First, we asked if any entities have made any estimates -- even imprecise estimates -- about how many US communications have been collected under section 702 of the FISA statute (which is the central provision of the FISA Amendments Act). You did not answer this question. Please provide an answer. We would expect this answer to be unclassified, but if you disagree please provide your reasons for keeping this answer secret.

Second, we asked if it was possible to estimate the order of magnitude of this number. (For example, is the number of US communications collected under section 702 closer to 100. or 100.000. or 100 million?) You did not answer this question directly, however the Director of the NSA has made public statements that appear to estimate this order of magnitude. Specifically, the NSA Director has said that "the story that [the NSA] has millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false." Please explain whether this statement should be understood to mean that the number of US communications collected under section 702 is less than "millions or hundreds of millions." Since the NSA Director made this statement publicly, we would expect this answer to be unclassified as well.

Third, we asked if any wholly domestic American communications had been collected under section 702 authorities. Your response was classified. We do not understand how simply stating whether any wholly domestic communications have been collected under section 702 authorities would have any impact at all on US national security interests. if you believe that it would, please explain why. And if you agree that it would not, please provide an unclassified answer to this question.

Fourth, we noted that the FISA Amendments Act does not prohibit searching through communications collected under section 702 to find the communications of particular Americans, and asked if the US government has ever attempted to search for the communications of a specific American in this way without a warrant or emergency authorization. Your response was classified. We do not understand how providing a 'yes' or 'no' answer to this question would impact US national security interests in any way, and we ask that you provide an unclassified response.

Eventually, after getting a lot of pressure from other Senators, Wyden agreed to lift his hold on the bill. At first he offered an Amendment saying he would lift the hold if only the NSA would release a number about how many Americans had their information collected by the NSA. However, with folks like Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss screaming about how terrorists would blow up everything if the spying didn't continue, the bill eventually passed.

And while some tried to bravely follow up on the questions raised by Wyden, once the bill passed there was no legislative leverage any more -- and nothing much happened. It was just a couple months later that Wyden asked his now famous question and Snowden released his documents.

But a bunch of Representatives on the other side of the Capitol, all members of the House Judiciary Committee, have realized that James Clapper has still never answered the question, and thus they've now sent him a letter, asking him to finally answer at least some sort of question concerning how many Americans have their data sucked up by the NSA:

In order that we may properly evaluate these programs, we write to ask that you provide us with a public estimate of the number of communications or transactions involving United States persons subject to Section 702 surveillance on an annual basis.

We note that we are not the first to ask you for this basic information. Since at least 2011, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have "sought repeatedly to gain an understanding of how many Americans have had their phone calls or emails collected and reviewed under this statute, but [they] have not been able to obtain even a rough estimate of this number."

They also note that the PCLOB -- the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board -- that looked into the big NSA surveillance programs suggested that the NSA should reveal this number -- and the NSA and Clapper have ignored this recommendation. As the Reps note, they recognize that Clapper is "reluctant" to provide such information, but...

First, we understand that an exact count of how many United States persons have been swept up into Section 702 surveillance efforts may not be feasible. The leadership of the intelligence community has long held this View, and the Inspector General for the National Security Agency--who is an administrative appointee, and not an independent inspector general--has deferred to your office on this issue. We understand that limited resources and technical barriers may prevent you from making an exact count.

We are not asking you for an exact count. Today, our request is simply for a rough estimate.

You have already demonstrated that such an estimate is feasible. An October 3, 2011 opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reports that the NSA, in an effort to address the court's concerns about the collection of domestic communications under certain applications of Section 702, "conducted a manual review of a random sample consisting of 50,440 Internet transactions taken from the more than 13.25 million Internet transactions acquired through upstream collection during a six month period." In that case, the court found:

NSA knows with certainty that the upstream collection . . . results in the acquisition of wholly domestic communications.

By expanding its Section 702 acquisitions to include the acquisition of Internet transactions through its upstream collection, NSA has, as a practical matter, circumvented the spirit of [the statute] with regard to that collection.

That case looked at a particular problem with "upstream" collection. A similar but broader analysis may be necessary here. We are willing to work with your office to determine the exact methodology for such a survey. We acknowledge that this estimate will be an imperfect substitute for a more precise accounting--but surely the American public is entitled to some idea of how many of our communications are swept up by these programs.

The letter also addresses another argument that the NSA made previously in response to Wyden's questions: claiming that (get ready for this one) the process to figure out how many Americans' privacy had been violated would... violate their privacy. It's a dumb argument, but perhaps not quite as dumb as it sounds. In short, the NSA wants to argue that it's not doing anything wrong in collecting this information, so long as the searches on the data are within the bounds of the law and the Constitution. Yet, because of that, they want to argue that doing the search to count the records would potentially violate the restrictions on when they can search the data. See? They can't tell you if your privacy has been violated, because to do so would violate your privacy!

In some ways, this is kind of a middle finger to the civil liberties crowd. It's the NSA's smirking response of "see? we can't tell you how much data we have because you put these privacy restrictions on how we can use that data -- and we take your privacy seriously."

But this letter addresses that concern as well, saying that basically no one thinks a "one-time" search solely for the purpose of counting violates anyone's privacy:

Second, we understand that producing an estimate might require reviewing actual communications acquired under Section 702, which could itself raise privacy concerns. On this point, we refer you to the judgment of the many civil liberties organizations that support conducting "a one-time, limited sampling of these communications," if necessary. They believe it would be "a net gain for privacy if conducted under appropriate safeguards and conditions." We agree, and we are willing to work with your office to implement those safeguards if necessary. This, too, is a problem we can solve.

And, finally, they close with a stick, reminding Clapper that this entire program is scheduled to sunset at the end of December, 2017, and if he wants the FISA 702 program (which covers both PRISM and upstream collection) to continue, he might want to actually respond.

The letter is then signed by 14 members of the House Judiciary Committee. It's not everyone, but it's a pretty good list of folks, including some of the more powerful members, including ranking member John Conyers and the author of the PATRIOT Act and the USA Freedom Act, Jim Sensenbrenner. Other signatories include Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Darrell Issa, Blake Farenthold, Jason Chaffetz, Jim Jordan, Ted Deutch, Suzan Delbene, Ted Poe, Hank Johnson, Jerry Nadler and David Cicilline. This is not just a pointless letter dashed off by one or two Reps. It's a big chunk of the Judiciary Committee (less than half, but still a significant amount).

I'm sure that Clapper will do his best to avoid actually answering, but at the very least it sets up what appears to be the next big fight on the horizon: over the renewal of Section 702.

Filed Under: estimates, james clapper, mass surveillance, nsa, numbers, ron wyden, section 702