Does Zillow.com provide valuable info?

The following is reprinted from Daily Real Estate News.

"Online home-value sites offer some useful tools, but their estimates are often wrong."The percentage of error on these estimates is still very large," says Delores Conway, director of the Casden Forecast at the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate. If there are not many comparable sales in one area, for example, she says, "the estimates will have huge errors in them."

Zillow.com and Cyberhomes.com rely on computer-generated automated models to estimate values. The models help compensate for the fact that many neighborhoods don’t have enough sales to generate accurate values based on experience. But these computer models don’t reflect home condition, improvements, and may not even accurately convey property descriptions.

Marty Frame, general manager of Cyberhomes.com, says the data on the site is best used as a way to form an overall impression of a neighborhood."Our goal is to provide you all this information and let you cherry-pick the things that are most interesting to you," Frame says. "You're going to look at an estimate and say, "that makes sense' or 'that doesn't make any sense.""

So, is it worth your time to search Zillow for an estimate of your home's value? Certainly! It's quick and easy and free! Just use the information as a starting point, realizing its limitations, and then get input from a real estate professional as well. The more information you have, the better.