If you've spent any time on Zillow or Trulia you've probably wondered: how accurate is the information you find on those sites?

Not very, according to a new report featured on Techcrunch today. But there's a big grain of salt: the report was commissioned and paid for by Roost, a new competitor in this space.

Still, the comparisons and the data are interesting. And so is the discussion toward the end of the post on whether quantity trumps quality when it comes to listings.

My own personal experience is that Zillow has become an industry standard for the valuation of a home that's not currently for sale. But I don't know anyone that turns to it if they are in the market for a new home.

I ran across a home price comparison index by Coldwell Banker and plugged in some numbers to see how May’s median price of $259,739 in Pierce County stacks up against markets around the country. (The index measures what the market value of your home would fetch in the cities you select.)

You get more for your money in Austin, Texas, and Milwaukee, Wis. And less in Denver and Salt Lake City.

Here’s a sampling of cities and prices:

Milwaukee: $224,718
Pensacola: $166,350
Salt Lake City: $283,086
Austin:$ 169,268
Denver: $277,249
Anchorage: $236,392
Burlington, VT: $256,821
Bethesda, MD: $656,644
Boston: $954,322
San Diego: $429,007
Albuquerque, NM: $218,881
Charlotte, NC: $178,023

Go here to run your own comparisons.

I discovered a new Web site today, after seeing it plugged at Rain City, that pits condo project against condo project on just about every stat you’d want to see. It’s called CondoCompare.

Here’s how it works: You select two or three condo buildings, hit "compare" and up pops a list that includes the low, high and average price per unit, price per square foot, number of listings, etc. It also breaks down pricing by number of bedrooms per unit and the size of the condos.

I don’t know how comprehensive the listings are, but when I searched Pierce County I got 175 buildings, though I was only given the first 35 to view, because my search was too broad.

According to the CondoCompare site, the company’s based in Seattle. And it's not all about handing out handy stats. Besides the listings, the site says CondoCompare has agents ready to chat online or meet you in as little as 30 minutes should you want to buy or sell.

Another company, this one out of San Francisco, has waded into real estate on the Web. It’s called YourStreet and invites readers to post opinions about their neighborhood in the interest of tracking where one might buy a home. It launched this month.

A blurb from the site:

Based on the premise that all real estate is local, YourStreet creates a platform for individuals to share market information on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

Folks can also vote on how hot or not they think a local market is. Seattle had 29 votes by noon on Sunday, making it a “Moderate Seller’s Market.” There was no info listed for Tacoma, though other communities “nearby” Seattle, such as Redmond, Port Orchard and Bremerton, were up.

Far and away the most-visited site I found while researching a story for next Sunday is Realtor.com. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, not only does it almost double the unique visitors (5.6 million in January) of second place rival Yahoo! Real Estate, but viewers surfed the site last month for an average of 32 minutes and 24 seconds. That's nearly three times as long as Rent.com, the Web site that pulled in the second-longest average stay of 11 minutes and 50 seconds.

Zillow.com has found a new way to use the Internet to help home sellers. It’s called Make Me Move it’s a way for homeowners who aren’t necessarily looking to move to enter a price on their home that would be too compelling to turn down. Zillow calls it “that magical number you just can't refuse.”

Zillow also announced a new program where you can list your home for free and launched a new real estate wiki that will house articles on buying and selling a home.

Check out the full writeup at Techcrunch.

I was cruising around the real estate net-o-sphere and came across a really really really (really?) cool site. Seattle real estate guru-ess Marlow Harris has a great website called "Unusual Life".

But before I tell you about the site, let me tell you a bit about Marlow. Her main website is SeattleDreamHomes.com. She also has a very widely read blog called 360Digest.com. She also writes for and moderates the Seattle P-I real estate blog called Seattle Real Estate Professionals, and she edits a Seattle arts and events site called SeattleNeighborhoodGuide.com.

Gosh, that makes my brain hurt just thinking about writing that much, let alone practicing real estate too. Anyway, she's an amazing writer and her Unusual Life site is even more amazing. It's full of pics and descriptions of strange, interesting, unusual, odd and artistic dwellings from around the world.

Be sure to click on the category and page links on her sidebar. There you'll find the Star Trek Apartment and the recently demolished Strange Tacoma Art House. On the site's main page you'll even find the Purple Proctor House that I wrote about here awhile back.

See? We're famous! ...sort of... (grin)

I'll bet there are more of these "interesting" homes around here. Know of one? Email me a photo and some info on it, it'll be fun!

Submitted by Steve Hurley

There's an East Coast software company called iiProperty.com that has developed an online rental tracking program and it looks very promising. In fact, for those of you who own multiple rental properties this sucker could be a godsend.

For about 13 bucks a month you can plug in up to 4 units into the program and it automates all sorts of stuff you probably hate to do manually. Like:
• Quick Post to Craigslist for rental ads
• Track Rents due and received
• Automate Invoices
• Tenant Notices via Email or Snail Mail
And for an additional monthly fee you can track up to 55 units, saving you endless headaches.

My favorite part about it though is the free Rent-o-meter.

This thing compares what you're charging for rent and what your neighbors are asking. I checked it out using a duplex address of a property I own and it kicked out 18 neighboring duplexes with prices and addresses all mapped out on Google maps.

It appears to be very accurate too. I always wondered how competitive my rates were, and now I know! I'm exactly where I expected to be positioned, rent-wise.

There's another fun link on the Rent-o-meter, it's a Top Ten List of the highest rental Rates in the US by zip or city. Not hard to guess the names that pop up: New York City at $5,200 per mo, Malibu at $4,615 per mo, and Beverly Hills seems to be a steal at only $3,550 per month.

Hey, maybe instead of spreading bark in out in front of the duplex next Spring, I'll dump some sand out there with a plastic pool and some fake sharks in it. That way I can call it beachfront property and raise the rent on my tenants. :)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com

If you haven't jumped on the Zillow bandwagon yet, you really should get on board. The Seattle based Z-Locomotive is beginning to fire up a good head of steam and is starting to move along on the National real estate tracks faster and faster.



Zillow.com recently announced they are teaming up with Yahoo Real Estate to provide Yahoo readers with Comparable Home Valuations for "millions of houses". And that's just the tip of the iceberg. This fall the Z company plans to allow even little guys like me to use their technology on our websites.

(For all of you real estate techno geeks, here's a link to the Open API article.)

What this means is that pretty soon you're going to see a lot more Zillow vocabulary (zocabulary ?) out there on the web and in the news. And my guess is that since Zillow is the thousand pound gorilla in the internet based home valuation market, the terms Zestimate™, Zindex™ and Zillowhead (I made that one up, lol), are going to become commonplace terms in our Local, Regional and National real estate conversations. Heck, even Microsoft has seemingly caught Zillophobia fever by naming their new ipod killer "ZUNE".

Maybe if Zillow follows in the tracks of Amazon and Expedia by opening a satellite office here in Tacoma we'll have to rename that section of town "Zacoma"

Heck, we've even got our downtown light rail system in place already so we could re-name that "The Z-Train", lol. Wanna hop on board?

Submitted by Steve Hurley

Reprinted with permission from:
www.NewHomeReportBlog.com

If the only thing standing between you and your dream home is the fact that someone else lives in it -- don't worry.

The Internet may soon offer a solution. The WSJ reported this week that some Web sites are helping people make unsolicited offers on homes that aren't for sale.

Reply.com and the Seattle-based Redfin Corp. are both mentioned in the story. Redfin is still devising plans for its service, the WSJ reports, though it will include notifying homeowners of potential buyers with letters and its Web site.

Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO told WSJ that owners might be able to "make a deal without a listing agent, a commission, a yard sign and all that jazz."

Readers, ponder the power of an unsolicited offer. Have you ever recieved one (And we're still talking real estate here people)? Have you ever made one? Do tell.