zillow

Drew hit the nail on the head.

Zillow does have it's usefulness. As well as the resource that Dean created: www.totalviewrealestate.com

But nothing compares to getting comps from your real estate agent.

Now, if your comps give you similar numbers as both zillow and totalviewrealestate, then it is just added confirmation that your estimates will be that more accurate.

I have seen Zillow be off by over 50k before.
Its a easy site to pull up at home and maybe get a quick idea of values and sales history.
I will never use this site to base my facts from.
Definitely suggest working with agent and get comps from them to determine home values.

My two r.e. agents fell through. After an unsuccessful new search for replacements, I'm focusing on FSBO's for now. Without MLS access, what's my best bet for sites to run comps myself?

I agree that Zillow has it's usefulness. I often use it for my initial evaluation of a property just to see if I want to go look at it based on the values.

First I'll compare a few sites like Zillow, Homegain and Totalview. If they're all similar in values that means your ballpark value is OK. And it's true that sometimes there will be differences of $50K.

Then I dig deeper. If you use Zillow and scroll down to get "Similar Sales", you can get solds in the area. You must sort them by date because you usually only want sales in the last three months. Then you must only look a similar sized homes built in a similar year with the same amount of bedrooms and within a mile (unless it's a sparsely populated area). Zillow will actually give you the price per square foot.

Then (as Dean taught me), you take out the highest one and the lowest one and average the rest. This is about as close to real comps as you can get without a license. Real comps are always your best bet, but this helps.

Lately, I have double checked zillow against comps from my agent and they haven't been too bad. It's been awhile since I've seen those numbers way off. Another good resource is Dean's website www.totalviewrealestate.com Totalview pulls in the zestimate and from eppraisal. Again, over the past couple of month I've been double checking these figures against current comps from my agent (to test...wink wink) and I love seeing the numbers come in within a good range. Use this site and zillow as a springboard when you are starting your research. Always verify and work with true comps when crunching the serious numbers.

I have someone that has 9 apartments for sale in a town of less than 10,000. There are very few apartments in this town and none that have sold in the last several years. They were built around 1980 but all have been completly renovated in the last year. All are rented and the owner has a waiting list of people wanting to rent. How can I get comps or determine the value of these apartments.

The owner has a construction buisness and he buys houses and apartments to remodel. He then either keeps them and rents or sells them to move on to the next.

Any ideas on determining value?

Also, don't forget that zillow (a well as some comps you get) don't take foreclosure, short sale, distressed property sales into consideration and that can throw the zestimate or comp off by a lot.