I will place ads for my listings on Zillow but I hate doing it.. The Zillow Estimates are way offff.

interesting...but nothing will ever replace local market knowledge.

Mike, welcome to Active Rain, in our area Zillow uses tax assessment records which is based on a 1/3 of the value of the home and I have had clients question the price of a home for sale because of what they looked up on zillow.  It can be misleading, but as technology improves it will help in the accuracy of the homes. 

Brett Shaw from Cyberhomes:

Hey Mike, just want to comment on something you said:

"What these companies do is crunch numbers to come up with a value, but they cannot really account for quality, condition, appeal, landscaping, views....."

It is difficult for any evaluation site to be completely accurate, as recent additions, renovations, etc. aren't reflected in the current public tax data that many sites solely rely on for their information.   Cyberhomes.com not only allows for visitors to edit details of a home, but you can also adjust for interior and exterior conditions of the home and market, view, privacy, and any renovations that have been done.   This feature is what can distinguish your home from the same home across the street with the same floorplan.  

As time goes by, the evaluations on many of these sites will improve.  Cyberhomes.com, however, is owned by Fidelity National Financial and therefore has a large amount of data to pull from.  Our "estimates" reflect much more than just numbers.  The site has over 100 million records and we update approximately 575,000 new records each month.  While the home valuation tool on many of these sites is what people look for, there is a ton of other data that is very useful. 

Just visit Cyberhomes.com and take a look around.  Happy Hunting!

Exactly my point!  So the only way that I would EVER get a reasonably accurate value is if every potential comparable in my area had been edited.  And all of them need to have been edited, not just the ones that were chosen, because otherwise how can the best ones be chosen unless they are all "apples to apples"? 

And who would be doing the editing on your site?  The homeowner or realtor, right?  And would it be reasonable to expect the homeowner or realtor to maybe oversell it a little bit?  Or forget to mention that it backs up to a nightclub, or apartment complex, or other negative element?  Seems like a fair possibility to me! 

Unless there is a full working crew of disinterested 3rd parties with no financial incentive constantly physically viewing the house and it's surroundings and inputing that info, then generating a number is always going to be just throwing a dart.  It's the difference between standing 100' from the dartboard and 50', but it is still a fairly random toss. 

Do these sites have their place and purpose?  Sure!  But to advertise "What is your home worth?" is just wrong, and I think it is a disservice to the homeowners that truly believe that the number they get is correct.  I understand that this is just marketing to drive traffic in order to sell advertising or sell products to businesses, but it's still BS in my opinion. 

The sites have value in generating numbers for banks that determine the statistical value range of a home based on certain expectations, and if the numbers are high enough then a lender can make a decision on it (or vice versa), or show accelerating or declining markets that might impact a loan decision.  Or, they can be tied to an inspection by a disinterested 3rd party (realtor or appraiser) that verifies those "general expectations" for the lender.  And in very rare instances, they may actually do a good job of evaluating the market of a specific property, but I think that is very rare. 

When a homeowner asks me why I appraised a house for $300,000 and they got a number from Zillow that was $60,000 higher, all I can tell them is that Zillow doesn't know anything about your house, and you would have better luck asking your neighbor what it's worth. 

Regarding the large amount of data CH can pull from, correct me if I am wrong but all of these sites pull data from all of the publicly available tax records for each county in the country.  FNF is no different.  I see from their web site that they own an MLS provider, but it was my understanding that the data in MLS is the property of the local board and not the software provider, so I would be surprised to know FNF is gathering it from there?  And the 575,000 per month is likely the updated tax records (reflecting title transfers) that again, every other online value provider has, correct?  All the data that each of these sites uses comes from the same place.  If you have the money, you can buy it.  The difference is the methods used to compute a value - everyone has their own algorithms, but the data behind it is the same.  Brett, tell me if I am wrong...

I can see your point about editing the facts of homes.  Yes, it is usually the homeowner or the realtor that would make these adjustments.  Obviously, there would be an expectation of honesty in doing this.  That is where your statement has merit.  This, however, only pertains to the homes that aren't currently listed for sell.  What I mean is that CH has contracts signed with top real estate firms, franchisors, and most MLS's to upload their current listings.  Because of that, the "homes for sell" listings are a direct reflection of how they are entered into the MLS by the agents.  

We do state that the estimation is just a tool and that you should always contact your local realtor because they will know the area better than a computer.   The real value of the site is the local information that is available (with more being added) about the area.  You were concerned about the information and where it comes from. There’s an enormous amount of information used in each Cyberhomes valuation, compiled directly from a variety of sources. Our database is the result of years of expertise in the homeownership information business, and contains:

• More than 100 million property, ownership, sales and mortgage records
• More than 120 separate data fields per record
  
• Detailed information on more than 85% of the U.S. population in more than 1,400 counties
  
• 575,000+ new records added monthly, in real-time as they become available from the source
  
• Enhanced data including: information from ten years of proprietary appraisals and appraisal reviews, geographic and spatial information, public and private schools, demographics, environmental data, comparables and neighborhood trends

How much is your home worth? Well, it all depends where you live.

The real estate market is still shaking. New data suggests that home prices have hit a new record low.  In every new study that comes out, homeowners from Miami, to Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, have seen their home value go lower every time. 

Is that disappointing?  Of course it is.

Should we sell?  Is not a good time.

Should we stick to it?  Yes, if you can.

Have we hit bottom?  Nobody knows. 

Banks are facing their worst foreclosure crisis. 

Don't take me wrong, it's good if you are in the market to buy a home for yourself or if you are an investor, but if you are not, and you own a home, most likely the value of your property is down at least 15 %.

Why do banks care if you are loosing your home?  By having to sell repossessed homes, banks have to literally slash their prices down.  It gets very costly for them, after all, they have to pay property taxes, maintenance costs, and whatever utilities that need to be paid, all of this expenses for a house that it's just sitting there, vacant, and the bank is getting nothing in return.

The latest study by the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index of 20 cities, revealed the news that for 22 consecutive months home prices dropped.  Only from April to May, 2009 the decline was of 0.9 %

http://fidelitymutualmortgage.com