A friend sent me this link to Zillow today and as always, I am a skeptical website user (ie. many that I am pointed to are just OK, not as exciting as they are touted to be to me)
But, I was very surprised at just how cool this site is! And it is very well done, to boot! Of course, the first address I plugged in was my own home. The info that came back was accurate to a T and contained a lot of valuable information.
I also was able to see my neighborhood (neighbors) via something that appears to be Google's API (looks like it, anyhow) and their home values, what they last sold for, what they are valued at now, how much property taxes they currently pay, etc. All of this information is public, but it would take a lot of time of information gathering to obtain the needed info.
I love this site, it is seemingly comprehensive and I could see using it to seek out realestate information, or to just be nosey :)
Try it, I think you will be surprised at what you find!
Zillow is a very cool site, although it would be more useful if its property value assessments used more AI (they tend to be low because they're based on relatively old data).
For another great real estate website, do you know about http://www.housingmaps.com? This is a mashup of Google Maps and Craigslist that's pretty awesome as well. You choose the city or region you're interested in, whether you want to rent or buy, and your price range. HousingMaps then puts up a Google map of the area, with little markers for each matching house or rental it finds on Craigslist. Very cool!
Posted by: Nils | February 28, 2006 at 02:10 PM
www.HomePriceMaps.com compliments
the HousingMaps site quite well.
while HousingMaps integrates Craigs list homes currently for sale and rent
with Google Maps, www.HomePriceMaps.com integrates how much homes SOLD for
with the google mapping technology
Posted by: HomePriceMaps | March 30, 2006 at 09:22 AM