Lay your head on my Zillow

The Wall Street Journal has an article on a new service at zillow.com. It is a free online service for estimating the value of a home, PLUS it doesn’t require you to identify yourself or talk to a real estate agent. The site is still in test form and data is spotty right now.

“For some parts of the country, Zillow has lots of good data, and it works really well. For other areas, it is still collecting and compiling figures and maps, so its results are limited or it can’t provide an estimate at all…. For now, though, it works best in metro areas like Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Cleveland. Results are weaker in metro areas like Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. And they are weaker still in metro areas like New York, Houston and St. Louis.”

It sounds like a promising site that will eventually prove to be a valuable tool. I have been unable to access the site today as traffic seems to be overloading their server. I will bookmark it and visit it later, though. Maybe it would be good to start a thread here and people can post on how accurate they believe their house estimate to be.

Update: I was finally able to access the site and look up their "Zestimate" and it was quite a bit less than the value I've been using. Which isn't surprising given the circumstances. They included sales prices in our subdivision, which is still under development. Basing the value of our house, with a landscaped backyard, window treatments, etc. etc. to a new house before any of these things are installed will yield varying results. And the sale of the house down the street which is the same model as ours (and was sold for very close to what I value our house) is not reflected in their database yet. I say all this not to bash Zillow.com--I think their site will be great as more data is in their system. Just that if you are computing valuation, be sure and include all the factors and variables you know.