In case some might not know...

Hey! Do moderators have my information like this? I did sign up and buy something from the PriusChat store, so they have my address.... Is this a joke or something?

 

My house in Colorado was WAY low. Buyer beware!

 

All this is is data mined from gov't tax assessor values. Mine is a duplicate of what is on my county recorder site. This is all free info anyway. My county assesses the house then taxes at a smaller percentage..I suspect some counties list the assessed value, thus the odd prices.

Typical Squid....useless info!!!

 

Comp Values can be a lot different than tax assessor values. It let's you look at the value of your home like it's a stock. Here's the blog I saw that turned me on to it.

 

Absolutely true!
In California, and other states which followed California's lead, there can be two identical houses sitting next door to each other, yet one can have a much higher assessor's property tax. Thanks to Proposition 13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Pr...ition_13_(1978) , the tax rate on real estate in California is limited to 1% of the purchase price, and a maximum 2% increase allowed in the assessed value per year. So, what can happen is the one neighbor who has lived in their house a long time will be paying a smaller amount in property tax, while the neighbor who just purchased and moved into the identical house next door can end up paying thousands of dollars more a year in property tax because their purchase price was much higher.

Is it fair? Some say yes, some say no.
I like the fact that elderly people on fixed incomes – who had been paying property taxes for years – no longer need to sell their house because they could no longer afford the rapidly increasing property taxes. They paid their share for the construction of schools, roads, etc. Why should someone who just moves into the area, and hadn't been paying for the infrastructure, feel entitled to pay the same amount as someone who has been paying year after year? It is the prior taxes which built the value of the area and increased the value of the homes. The new buyers now get to pay their fair share.

 

my house on this site is withing 50 dollars of what I had it appraised for this month. So it's fairly accurate for me.

We got lucky, property prices are climbing so fast here in central FL, that in 1 year, our house appreciated just shy of $100K. Sweet.

 

Not a moderator, yes a joke.

 

It's probably mostly based on sale prices. Now they don't tell you whether they made a deal for the seller to pay closing costs if the buyer pays more. That situation probably does quite a bit for the market. ie. House is worth $295k, buyer agrees to $300k if seller includes closing costs. Next buyer sees similar house, so it must be worth $300k, Okay, let's make it $305k if you include closing costs.

 

My guess is the site uses average square footage and average price per square foot for recent sales in the 'hood. This may work well if you live in a newer subdivision with ticky-tacky row box houses where the distinguishing feature between houses is the shape of the polished and lacquered brass digits which make up the house number.

If you live in an older neighborhood, or one in which there were several builders, then this site may have problems knowing things like quality of construction, effective age, and other intangibles which are impossible for computer logic to discern .

 

Or . . . your appraiser spent ten minutes using zillow.com, called it a day, then went golfing. :lol:

 

i checked 5 houses i have intimate knowledge of and they were pretty much right on. my house that i sold almost 3 years ago was appraised at $50,000 more than i sold it for. that is pretty much dead on with the average inflation for this area.

my dad's house was sold last summer, the value on it was 11,000 more than he sold it for.

i have a friend who has a house on the market and his value listed is dead on. so guess it all depends. i did check the house my dad and i built back in Michigan and they dont even list the town we lived in.

 

This is NOT AN APPRAISAL, it's just an AVM. Unlike the better ones, it's free, so keep in mind that basically you get what you pay for. In this case, not a whole lot. This one isn't very accurate compared to the ones I use frequently. But I agree that it is fun looking up other people's addresses... h34r:

 

Interesting. My house was valued at about 30K less than I paid for it and it also lost 2,500 more when I updated it by adding the extra bedroom and 1/2 bath. Hmmm...

 

Which other ones would you recommend- any free??