Many investors have one or more of the free residential real estate finding and valuation tools, Trulia, Cyberhomes and Zillow, bookmarked and use these tools on a daily basis. As with all home selling tips and automated valuation tools, the accuracy is only as good as the data that goes in. If you master these tools, you will be on your way to learning how to sell a house fast.
Trulia’s foreclosure information is imported from Realtytrac. To get complete address and default information you’ll need to subscribe to Realtytrac.
Six million active buyers and sellers search Trulia each month. It is therefore one of the better online sources for advertising properties. Advertising on Trulia will not be free, but costs may well be less than advertising in a local newspaper for the equivalent number of views.
Trulia is an alternative to Realtor.com for current listings and recently sold listings in a given area. Trulia is easy to search and flexible in being able to customize the search.
Zillow is a valuation site that combines sales data, mortgage refinance, and other pricing data in order to estimate the value of residential property. In areas where there has been little sales activity the data is sketchier and older. Zillow numbers should only be used as one indication of the value of a property. Always back up data found in a source like Zillow with current market analyses from Agents or formal appraisals. (Though recent sales can help you determine the value of a home on your own)
Cyberhomes uses 100 million property records from around the U.S. to derive its valuations. If the home is for sale, the sales listing price will be given as the value, which may over-inflate the actual value in some cases. Like Zillow, it puts the property of interest into the context of the neighborhood so comparisons can be made. The Cyberhomes tool allows the user to play around with valuation to determine how value might change if certain additions or changes were made to the property. If you are looking at distressed property this is one way of calculating quickly the difference condition has on the value of a home relative to other nearby property. Again, for the most accurate valuation, get the property checked by a certified home inspector and appraised before you buy.
These automated property finding and valuation tools are invaluable in giving Investors a starting point with locating and pricing properties without necessarily visiting the homes before putting in an offer. These tools make it possible to invest virtually, although they must always be used with caution and only as a starting point.
Do not take their valuations as gospel! Use the comments section below to post any experiences or questions you have about this topic. We want to hear your opinion.
Bob is a national speaker and has been training Investors all over the country for the past 4 years. Bob has coached/trained Investors all over the world. His students love his level of professionalism and depth of knowledge.
Bob has been married for 34 years (and counting!) and has two of his kids working with him in the business. He lives on a lake in Georgia, loves weekends on the water with his friends and family, traveling, and is a huge football fanatic.
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A free CMA from a real estate agent is helpful too.
A CMA is definitely something that is good to have especially in today’s market where prices are fluctuating very rapidly.
I like Zillow, but it’s tough to beat getting a CMA (comparable market analysis) from an experienced real estate agent. Zillow can give you some of the data, but a good agent can give you all the data AND the experience to walk you through what the data means.
Things have definitely changed since I first got into real estate. These tools are pretty helpful, and a lot of them are free which is good.
I like to use these online tools to help narrow down what properties I drive out to check out.
Rodney, I’m glad to see there are still some other old timers left like me. I really need to do a better job of using these online tools!
I’m definitely going to check out the Cyberhomes tool. I didn’t know there was any tool that would factor additions and changes into the value.
I agree Pamela…with the abundance of foreclosures available right now, you need to have some good online tools to weed out the bad deals from the good deals.
Zillow rocks! That data used to cost a fortune, and Now it’s on my laptop for free. Gotta love the Internet.
These are great tools to get good research on properties. Thanks for putting this article together, Bob.
These tools are a good place to start.
Yep FloridaBob – it did used to cost. Glad I can access it now for nothing.
There are a couple of local ones that we advertise on that work too.