New Real Estate Web Sites
There have been a couple of interesting real estate web sites coming on the scene recently.
One which launched late last year is Trulia.com. This site takes real estate listing from various sources such as newspaper classifieds and other web sites, and provides good searching, sorting, mapping and comparing features. The web site is pretty easy to navigate and is nicely done. They make full use of Google Maps to present the properties.
Another ambitious site is Zillow.com. This site provides valuations of homes across the country. I think right now their big problem is accuracy. They have an page explaining how accurate their estimates are, and to me, this does not seem accurate enough. It might be good for doing a little initial research into an area, but its not accurate enough to make any serious decisions on.
I agree that Zillow has some accuracy issues but if you consider what we had to do previously to get even general information on comps they are great. Remember when it was either call a real estate agent or try housevalues?
I expect that their accuracy will improve. I think this will help eveyone in this flipping houses business - both buyers and sellers.