Great real estate site, very unique

[PrincessKitty1]

The square footage of my house is off by about 150 square feet, but it's straight from the property appraiser's website for my county, so I know where they get their inaccurate info from .

The comparables they compared to were a bit out of date--there were none after around June 2005, so they missed all the houses that have sold in my neighborhood since then (prices have gone up in the last 7-8 months). Still, I would say they are within 10% of the correct price. Very interesting!

Most county property appraisers are online these days, so most people should be able to look up comparables themselves.

 

[mom2boys]

Thanks for the site Dan. Very interesting. Doesn't show our house which has been here since 1963. Could be because it hasn't changed hands since 1989.

 

[DawnCt1]

I think that the pricing is accurate but the details of the house are not. We had an addition added on 10 years ago and it hasn't been updated to include the additional square footage. Also, we have an extra bath than was listed and that was original construction. All and all however, it is a great site. Thankyou. Additionally, it required that I download Mozilla Foxfire because it wasn't compatible is Mac's Safari. I am glad I did. It runs so much faster than Safari so two good things came of this post.

 

[kejoda]

The price and sq. footage wasn't that far off but somewhere along the way I've lost a bedroom. Its says we have five but we really have four. Say maybe its walled off somewhere. What fun a secret room.

 

[sorcerormickey]

Not very updated images tho - it does not even show our house (or most of our neighborhood for that matter) and we have been here 18 months.

 

[Tina]

Cool sight, but not at all accurate. The prices were all over the place for the homes on my street. My house was shown for $60k less than the house across the street. Our houses are nearly identical, only we have a full finished basement and nicer, level lot. Few of the home details were correct.

 

[Aneille]

Cool sight, but not at all accurate. The prices were all over the place for the homes on my street. My house was shown for $60k less than the house across the street. Our houses are nearly identical, only we have a full finished basement and nicer, level lot. Few of the home details were correct.

Well for one it can't be absolutely accurate because they have no idea of the condition of the homes.

Also if one home has been recently refi'd (had a bank appraisal done) or sold it will more likely be more accurate than another home on the street that hasn't been.

So I would expect large ranges.

The people with the most accurate neighborhoods have probably have had a lot of turn over or their neighborhood in general has been going through a remodel phase where people are taking out loans etc to do it.

 

[wilderness01]

Fun site. Some specs are correct for my house but the appraisal about $100,000 off from what I could get. If I only got what they said I would have lost $ and this is a less than 9 year old neighbor with lots of very $$$$ homes going up right behind us. Thanks for the site.

 

[EthansMom]

Interesting site. Our house was listed about $150-$170k too low though.

 

[JVL1018]

Those are just the assessed values for tax purposes, NOT what they sell for. Our house just got reassessed for $402,000(up from $238,000) but would sell for about $600,000.
My brother's house shows up there as $163,000, but he paid $300,000 for it 3 years ago and his neighbor just sold the same house, but with less updates for $489,000.
Obviously they have not been reassessed in years.

 

[pixiemomma]

This is neat but it showed my brother's 4 bedroom 2 bath house as a 2 bedroom 1 bath house. OMG, my sister's old house, they sold for 140k a few years ago, now valued at $435k.

 

[Cyndiu]

The results were a little high for my neighborhood. The last couple of houses went for about $300K and the site says mine is worth $400K. (I wish, I'd be moving to Florida if it was!)

 

[barkley]

i think they may be using property tax info. and blending it with speculative pricing based on historical increases in prices. in our case the actual basis for property taxes is almost 200K less than the value they show for our house (and our county is very proactive on assessments).

i enjoyed the feature that pulls up the comp homes. it gave a run down of every home with similar features that sold in the past year-so we could look at it and find the identical models to our home and see what they actualy sold for.

 

[tar heel]

My house has lost about 200 square feet and is worth $24,000 LESS than we paid for it nine years ago -- looks like we're in big trouble.

 

[PaulaSue]

Not up to date, IMO, for what things are going for here.

My house and our old apartment (changed into townhouses after we moved) was about $30, 000 less than our appraisal and what our old apartment just sold for a few months ago.

 

[JudicialTyranny]

According to this site, the value of my home has gone from $400K in September 2005 to $300K in January 2006! (4 months)

Real estate has cooled off a little around here, but not that much...

 

[JennInTN]

It's been stated a couple of times, just wanted to point out again that these are assessed values....not appraisals.

An inspector for the tax assesssor has no way to know what's inside a home. Plumbing fixtures are easy, actual number of bedrooms are not. As far as square footage, If you've got a one-story square or rectangle, no problem. Get into split-level, angles, you name it, the accuracy of square footage is compromised.

It a good start for the site, which is still in beta test. I think we'll see much improvement in the future from them. I mean it's being brought to you by expedia's founder. I look forward to seeing where it is in the coming months.

 

[JudicialTyranny]

It's been stated a couple of times, just wanted to point out again that these are assessed values....not appraisals.

Not in my case.

I know what my assessed value is, and that's not what is on the site. It may somehow be based on assessed value plus some other "salt" like comps and market.

But around here, assessed value does not change unless (1) the property is sold or (2) there is a county wide reassessment. The last county wide reassessment here occurred in 2000 and the last one prior to that was 1975.

If it were showing assessed value, my house would show about $230K (the assessed value that shows on my tax bill), but it shows $400K in Sept 2005 and $300K present.

 

[PrincessKitty1]

It's been stated a couple of times, just wanted to point out again that these are assessed values....not appraisals.

At least for my county (where sale prices are all on line), I believe it's based on comparable sales, not assessed value.

 

[Pugdog007]

My street isn't even on there.