Don't understand why the government needs to get involved in what someone says something is worth, it's their opinion and they're entitled to it.
Edit: It would be funny if Zillow also started putting up alerts about problems with government finances which will likely impact future taxes, such as in Illinois.
Perhaps with that buyer and seller. I believe, though, that Zillow rewrites historical estimates when they get new data. So you can't really see how wrong they were after a sale.
If an engineer at Zillow manipulated the Zestimate on a home they were trying to buy or sell, would they succeed in driving the price of the home in the desired direction? I think so.
Clearly real estate agents have the same feeling or they wouldn't be suing.
The problem is, you'll never get to establish a sale price if the seller thinks his house is worth 100k over market or a buyer thinks the seller is asking 100k over market because that's what they saw on Zillow.
Further, when zillow gets the estimate of a house wrong it costs them nothing, but there are real costs to Zillow's bad estimates to buyers and sellers.
A "civil matter" is where the courts—a part of government—apply law—created by government—to non-crimes disputes, often (as in this case) between private parties.
It absolutely does not indicate the absence of government involvement, even if the government isn't a party to the litigation.
There are so many sources of info for house value that I don't see how Zillow could single handedly be manipulating a house's sale price. If it's not selling for what the homeowner thinks it's worth, it's probably not worth that much.
Civil courts exist to provide monetary damages if damages can be proved to exist. Yes, they can also compel arbitrary behavior as a part of governing body.
This is independent of any stance on Zillow and a state licensing regime. If the plaintiff can convince that the tool is making her lose money, the judge will award her money.
"but that means < cue completely uninformed legal analogy >" yes you can make a career out of litigation, many people have.
many summary judgements on flaky arguments are made just because the defendant didn't respond. the judgements are collected from you bank in any jurisdiction that will reciprocate
Although, I'm not sure why the plaintiff should be awarded anything, even if Zillow causes her to "lose money". Unless Zillow is doing something specifically to her home estimate, then it's merely offering a differing opinion on what they think the home is worth.
"Yeah, I don't think it's worth that much. A hundred dollars, tops."
"Did you just appraise this car? Oh, you done messed up."
muffled sound of approaching police sirens
EDIT: Hah, didn't see you'd used the exact same analogy elsewhere.
Civil courts exist to provide remedy for non-criminal violation of the law; award of damages (actual, statutory, punitive, or otherwise) is one form of civil remedy, but not the only one available.