Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Which Free Comp Site Is Better?

January 20, 2010 by  
Filed under realestate for sale by owner

  Which free comp site is better? There may be different opinions on the subject.  Realquest is quickly over taking Zillow day by day.  Zillow is a free home value estimator web site that offers post sales data. Zillow is a fun tool but don’t count on it. The free home estimator can be off the mark by 25% on 1 in 10 homes, and even Zillow says “We don’t recommend it as a final word”.  Realquest on the other hand is used by 9 of the top 10 lending institutions, and gives its users the capability to download mailing list. In some instances Zillow uses tax appraisals as the value of a property which can be very outdated in some counties. Realquest uses court house records to determine the value of property, which also includes for sale by owner transactions. 

  This is very important because 30% of homes are privately sold and not sold through realtors.  Zillow does show pictures, bird’s eye view pictures, and 3D panoramic pictures of properties searched for. This is a feature that Realquest hasn’t incorporated into its system at this point. Zillow offers very valuable information about properties for free, but has been known to sometime have inaccurate data. This may be due to users being able to change information about a property they may or may not own. Realquest only supplies a limited amount of free information about properties unless you subscribe to its services or commit to buying a detailed report. With Realquest subscribed services users can pull up deeds and search for properties by owner name.

  Zillow sometimes uses homes to compare that are not comparable to the property in question. When comparing homes the basic characteristics are the same number of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, age, architecture, and neighborhood type, but Zillow will use anything close within 2 miles. Realquest is much more precise when comparing homes and calculating comps. I tested Zillow by checking the value of a rental house I own in Georgia and the value came back a lot higher then I know its worth. Then I tested the same property at Realquest and the value came back a lot closer to the numbers I expected.  Get your own opinion by searching the value of a property that you already know the value for.

Zillow.com

Realquestinvestor.com

Grab your FREE REPORT “How To Buy Wholesale Properties Without Any Risk” at http://www.helpnoterealestate.com/cheapproperty.html

 

Khalid Johnson is a real estate investor out of Atlanta,GA. My company sells wholesale properties all over Atlanta with tons of equity. Visit my web site above for a FREE REPORT “How To Buy Wholesale Properties Without Any Risk”.

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