What Is Your House Worth?

How to Get House Values Online

For many decades, a house was considered an asset almost guaranteed to appreciate in value, and a means of saving for the future. But all that has changed. The value of your house is more important than ever, given the uncertainty in the economy, and with so many homeowners facing bankruptcy or foreclosure. These free online tools to help you determine how much your house is worth should come in handy. And if you're in the market to buy a house, they can help decide if the asking price is reasonable.

Zillow - Automated Online House Values

Zillow offers free automated house valuations on more than 100 million homes across the United States. You can see the estimated value of your house, your neighbor's house, or just about any other home in the country -- whether it's for sale or not. Zillow pulls information from public real estate records, tax rolls and other sources to compute a house value. Zillow also offers a forum where you can chat with pros, as well as other home buyers and sellers. And for mobile users, Zillow has free apps that you can download and install on your iPhone, iPad, or any Windows or Android-based smartphone.

One of its best features is their Make Me Move. This allows you to flag your home as "For Sale", edit the condition of your home and update it should you do necessary repairs or add to its value with improvements. You can also add photos and descriptive text. Prospective buyers who are browsing the Zillow site can contact you to make an offer. It's important to remember that the house values that Zillow calculates are estimates, automatically generated by a computer program. I still recommend that you contact a realtor when you're in the market to buy or sell a home.

Eppraisal - Another House Value Option

Eppraisal.com is another free online service that allows anyone to access to property valuations. Like Zillow, this service pulls together public record data from millions of homes to give you an estimated value range. In my personal experience, Eppraisal generates a more realistic estimate of house values, as compared to Zillow. If you're selling a home, considering a refinance, or just curious about recent sales in your neighborhood, Eppraisal can provide information to help in your decision making process.

You can also go to Yahoo Real Estate, enter the address of the property, and it will show you both the Zillow and Eppraisal estimates on one page.

HouseValues - A Tool For Sellers

HouseValues will provide home sellers an estimate of what a property is worth. They do this by comparing your home with others in your neighborhood, as well as factoring the age, square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and amenities such as large yard, 2-car garage, etc. You simply fill out a form with the above information and the timeframe for when you would like to sell your house. The information is forwarded to a Licensed Real Estate professional to be processed.

Unlike Zillow and Eppraisal, HouseValues is not really useful for BUYERS who want to scope out the values of various homes in a specific area. This service is focused on SELLERS, and DOES NOT provide the instant gratification of an online estimate. After filling out the form on HouseValues, you will be contacted by a real human real estate agent, by phone, mail or email. And that person will of course want to help you sell your house on a commission basis. There's nothing wrong with using a real estate professional to help you buy or sell a house. In fact, you will probably get a better estimate of the true value of your home from a real person than a computer.

I just want to point out that HouseValues is primarily a lead generation tool for real estate agents, and they don't really live up to the promise on their home page to deliver "your home's market value online." There are other sites like this one, where you can tell you're not going to get an instant online house valuation based on the fact that they ask for your email or phone number up front.

Although it's possible to save money by not using a licensed realtor, there are certain cautions. Real estate agents can help you determine the optimal selling price for your home, and will advise you when market conditions make it a good idea to lower or raise your asking price. They handle the negotiation process, and help you avoid various pitfalls. And of course using online house value estimators like these will not tell you about fighting neighbors, screaming kids, or dogs barking at all hours. Do some research and never buy a piece of property without seeing it first, and getting a thorough home inspection from a professional.

Do you have comments about Zillow, Eppraisal, or HouseValues? Do you know of other useful online tools for home buyers and sellers? Post your comments below...