Free Online Real Estate Appraisal: Zillow.com
With most American homeowner wealth tied to skyrocketing real estate prices, it's no wonder that a free online real estate appraisal website is topping the charts.
For more information: Free Online Home Value Appraisals.
The site culls information from a number of sources, including tax records, recent sales of comparable homes to come up with an estimate of home valuations. It could very well put residential real estate appraiser's out of business.
Zillow allows anyone to enter the address and zip code of most any home and view its historical and present estimated value, along with the value of neighboring homes. The site mashes up with satellite maps to show a view of the neighborhood with an overlay of valuations.
The real estate appraisal site also lets you refine the estimated value of a home based on changes or additions to that home. For example, if you have a recently remodeled kitchen, you can refine the value based on this change. Zillow calculates the remodel value in your area based on local remodel data and depreciation.
Zillow results include:
- Historical value changes for each home, charted over the past year,
five years or ten years. - Historical value changes for each home as compared to its surrounding
zip code, city, state or the entire U.S. - All comparable home sales in an area.
- Satellite, aerial and parcel views of many homes.
- Individual home data, such as number of bedrooms/bathrooms, square
footage, lot size, stories and year built.
Zillow was created by Expedia founder Richard Barton. There are currently more than 60 million homes in the Zillow.com database, and Barton intends to expand dramatically.
According to Yahoo Buzz metro data, the top five areas where the Zillow.com website is most popular are: Seattle-Tacoma, Washington; Bend, Oregon; West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce, Florida; Sacramento, California; and San Diego, California.
