How I estimated my house value at $625,965 for August 2007

September 4, 2007 by Pinyo.

In my net worth report, I estimated my house at $625,965 for August 2007. I figured I should go into more detail about how I did this. I have to say that I owe this method to The Dough Roller’s 10 Fun and Free Websites to Lookup the Value of Your Home (and your neighbor’s home).

First, I list these entries on my spreadsheet:

Reply
Eppraisal
Real Estate ABC
HomeGain Low
HomeGain High
HouseFront Low
HouseFront High
Cyberhomes
Zillow

Then I go to these web sites to get my estimates:

Yahoo! Real Estate — this gives 3 values retrieved from Reply, Eppraisal, and Zillow
Real Estate ABC
HomeGain - this gives a high and a low value
HouseFront - this gives a high and a low value
Cyberhomes

Lastly, I use the Olympic convention of dropping the highest and lowest scores, then averaging the rest to get the final estimate. So far, Reply has been giving me the lowest value which I know is way below market; and high estimate from HomeGain has been giving me the highest value which is too high.

I hope that clears it up.

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3 Comments

Eric, 5. September 2007, 14:17

Thanks for the links Pinyo! I really hope that Reply is waaay off. It estimated my house at over 20% lower than Zillow!
Pinyo, 5. September 2007, 19:50

No problem. I think Reply is waaay off. That’s why I drop the lowest and the highest estimates. I am fairly comfortable with the method I use. I think it does reflect the true market value quite well. Of course, you may want to adjust for the condition of your house since that’s one thing these web sites cannot account for.
Minimum Wage, 9. September 2007, 13:33

Estimating my house value would be utterly pointless, so I don’t bother.