For example, a search through my neighborhood with Zillow shows that your valuations are about 30% to 50% or more below fair market. I say this, becuase I know what several homes in the neighborhood sold for in the last couple of years, and your current valuations are about 30% to 50% below the sale prices (even from 2 years ago – Central Austin has been going up about 8% to 10% per year for the past 2 yrs). The same can be said for current real estate listing asking prices vs. the Zillow data.

The tools I use are several. I use Google Maps to view the surroundings and traffic patterns in the neighborhoods in Boston at which I am looking. I have a realtor sending listings via email to me daily. I view listings in and around the boston area for pricing info and speak with my friends who own homes there. BTW – prices in Boston are dropping – lots of listings seeing one or many price reductions.

On the sell side, there is appraisal information available over the Internet from the City of Austin (http://www.traviscad.org/search.htm). You can see appraisals by name, address, etc. I also talk with neighbors about homes that recently sold to find comparables.

Appraisal records are a problem. The cities themselves can never keep up with price changes.

It’s not that hard to get a beat on market prices for real estate from my perspective, but it requires local information and knowledge. Somehow incorporating that into your service – the current listings would be a big help. I’m afraid until home sale prices become public information, this problem will persist.

Zillow.com got itself a ton of new venture capital yesterday, so today seems like a fine time to deconstruct its praxis.
When Zillow was brand new, Catherine Reagor, the dippy local real estate reporter for the Arizona Republic wrote:
Want a reality ch…

What sources did you use to develop local market knowledge (esp. out of state) and what features could we add to Zillow that you would find useful?