What You Need to Know About Online Home Search Tools

There are many great Jupiter area homes for sale. Click here to perform a full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (561) 951-9301 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Zillow and Trulia are immensely popular real estate sites that allow you to do research on property values online. While they aren't a bad place to start searching for homes, they're pretty hit and miss when it comes to placing an accurate value on your home.

Why might that be?

It's important to keep in mind that these evaluations don't take into account upgrades you have made inside your home. Many of the estimates we found online were much lower than the real value of the home. For example, one house we have listed is worth $45,000 more than the "zestimate" we found for it. Further, we found homes were undervalued in 15 different instances when we checked our price against Trulia and Zillow.

Although home evaluations tend to be inaccurate, these sites can still serve as an important resource. For example, Zillow predicted a 15% appreciation of the market last year and that's about what we saw. This year they expect it to fall to 2%, and we have reason to believe that's an accurate estimation. These forecasts show that sometimes these sites do have people on the scene to provide accurate numbers.

So, what's the verdict? Should or shouldn't we use these online search tools?

We would advise you to use them sparingly - to take the information they give you with a grain of salt. Your best option is to hire a professional. We'd be happy to come by and take a look at your house, no obligation. We can give you an idea of how much your home is really worth in today's market and help you develop an effective plan to get top dollar in an exceptional amount of time. 


Give us a call or shoot us an email to schedule a meeting today!

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