Recently I called my mortgage company to see about a refinance with all the low interest rates as of late. I was surprised when the representative told me she was checking the value of my home online. Apparently with the values of homes in such a state of flux, mortgage companies have turned to the internet for quick and easy appraisals. Of course this doesn’t apply for purchasing a new home, and I am sure if the value is too close to call they will still get a human appraiser.

I used to think Zillow.com and such was just reading tea leaves. But it appears Wells Fargo believes in it enough to offer refinancing based on this method. And as more and more data is electronic, these methods are bound to get more accurate. If you are interested in finding the value of your home, here are some of the common sites used:

Zillow.com: This is my favorite of the sites. It’s easy to use and has lots of features.
$218,500 estimate of my home.

CyberHomes.com This site slows down my entire computer every time I try to load it. Probably because it tries to load pictures of 800+ homes I don’t care about… Once I do get to the page, some features do not work and it has less info than Zillow
$199,778 estimate of my home.

Eppraisal.com This site gives it’s own estimate and shows you Zillow and CyberHomes as a comparison.  Nice site to use as a one-stop for all 3 values.
$175,516 estimate of my home.

RealEstateABC.com This site is a quick and easy way to find the value.  Shows you the home value and a list of comparables.  Seems like this site gets it’s estimate from Zillow.
$218,500 estimate of my home.

Other Resources

Domania.com This site won’t tell you an exact figure but it will show you comparable sales in your neighborhood.

HomeGain.com This site is similar, also shows you comparables.

RentoMeter.com If your house is an investment property, this tool can help you find it’s rental value.

I am not sure which is most accurate.  I think the frequency these sites update is very important to the accuracy.  For example, there is a house down the road that sold for quite high.  I think this recent sale is causing Zillow’s estimate to be higher as Zillow seems to update more frequently.  At the time I purchased my home, Zillow’s estimate was about $5,000 under the official appraisal and sales price making it about 97% accurate in that instance.   I’d say that is pretty good  not having seen the house or to even know the details of the house.

What have been your experiences with online home value estimators??

Never upgrade your home beyond the level of your neighborhood. I found this one out the hard way earlier in the year. We used to live in a small condo/townhouse that was in college-dorm shape when we bought it. It was in a great neighborhood and perfect location. However, It had never been upgraded since it was built in the early 1980s. White walls, cheapest fixtures, cheapest floors– basically everything was cheap and plain. So, of course we wanted to renovate and upgrade our home to meet our very discerning standards.

We put down beautifully engineered mahogany wood floors over the cheapest ceramic tile Home Depot offers. We painted every room to a more elegant, white-truffle hue. We replaced the plywood staircase-o-death with a fine new cypress staircase. We put down tall, regal baseboards and crown molding. We changed every light fixture we could get our hands on. And of course the horror of a project my husband will never let me forget– the kitchen. I thought new cabinets and granite countertops would be simple, boy was I wrong. Around the time we discovered the electrical ran through the fur-down of the cabinets, I thought my head would be spiked on a curtain rod outside our condo as a warning to other over-ambitious renovators.

Granted, we did everything DIY and spent a fraction of what you would expect all of this to cost, largely due to my helpful and handy in-laws. We thought we were doing great. In the end, it looked beautiful, we were proud, and it certainly made it easier on the eyes while we lived there. But eventually we outgrew the 795 sqft. and wanted a back yard for the doggie.

The day after I put it up for sale on the internet I had someone come look at it and immediately put in an offer very close to my asking price. Woo-hoo, we are awesome, I thought. I had several other people come look at the condo during escrow or comment from the online ad and all said how beautiful and home-y it looked.

Then, the mean-ole appraiser came into the story. God, how I hated him. He appraised the house at over twenty thousand LESS than the offer price. I cried, I begged, and I pleaded with him. It was not pretty, trust me. The problem was that we were the only people in our complex who upgraded, so our home was well beyond the rest of the “neighborhood” and therefore just couldn’t appraise for what my beautiful baby truly deserved. In the end, we had to bite the bullet and take the cut (it was very complicated and I will spare you the details, for now). It did teach me a valuable lesson, and so far I have only put the $20 it cost me to buy new cabinet knobs into this house. This time I will wait for the neighbors to start their improvements before I start mine.