A homeowner in Flushing called me last week with a simple question: what's my house actually worth right now. Before I could answer, she told me she'd already checked. Zillow said one number. Redfin said something close but not quite the same. Movoto, she said, "wasn't even in the same neighborhood as the other two." She wanted to know which one was lying to her.
None of them were. That's the part worth sitting with if you're buying or selling in Flushing this fall. Three legitimate data sources looked at the same town in the same general stretch of 2026 and produced three different pictures of what's happening, and the gap between them tells you more about how this market actually works than any single number would.
The Three Numbers, Side by Side
Here's what she was looking at, pulled straight from the sites she checked.
| Source | Metric | Figure | Time Window | Year-Over-Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow | Average home value (index) | $243,819 | As of May 31, 2026 | Up 6.9% |
| Zillow | Time to pending | About 12 days | Current | — |
| Redfin | Median sale price | $246,000 | Rolling 3 months ending May 2026 | Up 7.0% |
| Redfin | Days on market | 26 days | Rolling 3 months ending May 2026 | Down from 29 |
| Movoto | Median sold price | $217,400 | August 2026 (single month) | — |
| Movoto | Days on market | 78 days | August 2026 | Down from 147 |
Zillow and Redfin are practically holding hands. Movoto is standing in a different room. A $28,000 gap in median price and a 52-day gap in market time, for the same town, isn't a rounding error. It's a signal.
Why the Same Town Produces Three Different Answers
Part of this is simple math, not mystery. Zillow's number isn't a sale price at all. It's the Zillow Home Value Index, an estimate built from modeled Zestimates across the entire local housing stock, whether or not anything actually changed hands. It moves slowly and smoothly because it's averaging value, not transactions.
Redfin's $246,000 is a real sold-price median, but it's a rolling three-month window that ends in May, which means it's built mostly on homes that went under contract in March and April, during the spring push when Flushing's market, like most of Genesee County, tends to run hottest.
Movoto's $217,400 is also a real sold-price median, but it's a single calendar month, August, sitting on the other side of the year's seasonal curve. Late-summer closings often include a different slice of inventory than March and April contracts do.
So one difference is simply timing. Spring numbers and late-summer numbers describe different moments in the same market's rhythm. But timing alone doesn't explain everything here, and this is where it gets useful for anyone actually pricing a home.
The Real Story Is Two Markets Wearing One Median
Look again at Movoto's own year-over-year comparison. Days on market fell from 147 to 78, and the number of homes sold in August rose from 128 to 142. By Movoto's own measurement, the market got faster and busier this year, not slower. Yet the median price it's reporting is the lowest number on the table.
That combination, faster turnover and a lower median, usually means the mix of what's selling has shifted, not that homes are worth less. If August brought a wave of smaller, lower-priced homes moving quickly, closer to Flushing's walkable downtown core and inside the Genesee County R-1 school boundaries that cover most of the city, that alone would drag the median down even while activity picks up. Meanwhile Redfin's spring window, sitting at $246,000 with a tighter 26-day market time, likely captured a different band, including some of the larger move-up homes and outlying properties on bigger lots that took spring buyers longer to commit to but ultimately closed at higher prices.
Flushing isn't one housing market pretending to be three numbers. It's closer to two markets, a faster-moving entry-level segment near town and a slower-moving move-up and larger-lot segment on the edges, and every portal's median is just a snapshot of whichever segment happened to close more of its deals during that particular window.
What This Means If You're Pricing a Home This Fall
If you're getting ready to list, the practical takeaway isn't "which website do I trust." It's that a single median, from any source, tells you almost nothing about what your specific home is worth. A three-bedroom ranch a few blocks from downtown and a four-bedroom quad-level on a larger outlying lot are not competing in the same price conversation, even though they're both "in Flushing" on every one of these sites.
The number that actually matters is the sold price of homes that match yours in size, lot, and location, closed within the last 60 to 90 days. Not the town-wide average. Not a rolling three-month figure that blends two different segments together. A homeowner who anchors to Zillow's $243,819 average because it's the first number Google shows them may be pricing against a segment their house doesn't belong to.
What This Means If You're Comparing Flushing to Somewhere Else
If you're weighing Flushing against another Genesee County town, the instinct is to line up medians side by side and pick the "cheaper" one. That instinct breaks down once you understand that a town's median shifts depending on which segment of its own inventory happened to trade that month. A town that looks $28,000 cheaper in August than it did in May hasn't gotten cheaper. It's just showing you a different room in the same house.
The better comparison is segment to segment. What does an entry-level home near downtown cost in Flushing versus a comparable town, and separately, what does a larger lot on the outskirts cost in each place. Comparing whole-town medians across cities compounds the same distortion that's already confusing a single town's own numbers.
A Few Questions Worth Answering Directly
Which number should I believe if I'm selling this month? None of them on their own. Ask for a comparative market analysis built from closed sales in your specific price band and lot type over the last 60 to 90 days. That's a narrower dataset than any portal publishes, and it's the one that actually predicts what a buyer will pay for your house.
Why did days on market drop so much on Movoto but stay short and steady on Redfin? They're measuring different populations of homes in different months. A 147-to-78-day swing on Movoto's August data suggests last August's inventory sat longer, this August's moved faster, likely because more of it was in the quicker-moving entry-level range. Redfin's spring figure was already short and simply got a bit shorter.
Does this mean Flushing is a buyer's market or a seller's market right now? It depends which segment you're in. The pace and competitiveness on the entry-level side, moving in under a month per Redfin's spring data, looks like a seller's advantage. The larger, outlying properties tend to take longer to find their buyer, which gives more negotiating room on that end. It's genuinely two different conversations happening under one town name.
If you're trying to figure out what your specific Flushing home is worth in this market, or you're comparing Flushing against another Genesee County town and want the segment-level numbers instead of the headline ones, I'd rather walk you through the actual closed comps than point you back to a website that's already confused you once. Reach out to Jeremy Taljonick at Mid MI HomeSellers and we'll build a pricing picture based on what's actually selling in your part of town, not the average of everything.
