Dave Gallagher is the business editor at The Bellingham Herald. He maintains a business blog for the Bellingham & Whatcom county business pulse.

Dave recently wrote an interesting article describing Zillow's new analysis report - called home values band.

This Zindex home value indicator provides details on national home trends. This tool analyzes fourth quarter 2007 home selling prices (in various bands of price range) compared to a year earlier. Great idea, but there are numerous people raving about the accuracy, versus another partisan crowd ranting about the gross inaccuracies of the pricing indicators!

Well I don't know if the ones ranting are in denial, just can't face up to the fact that real estate values have declined, or if Zillow's Web site is skewed with inappropriate bands of house width!

Well check it out and proceed with caution, who knows it might just be a very accurate tool for your neighborhood!

Warm regards,

Michael Lozar
Bellingham Mortgage Loan Officer