[AlanSE]

They see new builds hitting the market and look at the (aspirational) price put there by the builder. It's a borderline conspiracy that Zillow lists certain high-end new developments for a year (before they're built) which pollutes the "for sale" housing inventory. Whereas the "recently sold" is the best metric of how things actually are, the search options don't allow you to get an accurate market sense from these. After all, the app's purpose is not to give you an accurate sense of the market.