<p>Google Earth</p>
<p>Funny - Zillow claims that there are three fewer bedrooms - but the price is higher than one would expect. Huh.</p>
<p>OMG. I just checked this site again ( my sibling just bid on a house and was asking my advice) and there is now a brand new feature on Zillow for many cities called Bird’s Eye view. Unlike the Google Earth satellite photos, these photos are taken up close and at a 45 degree angle from the house and in all four directions! The funny thing is that I can tell the exact day this photo was taken, since there are trucks lined up in front of my house - we were putting in a new retaining wall.</p>
<p>Prices are still pretty inaccurate for my area. Although real estate is cooling off, and homes are sitting on the market longer, houses are still selling anywhere from 30% to 100% and up from Zillow price.</p>
<p>I also “visited” several of my childhood homes online and almost fell off my chair seeing them that close up (front, back and side yards!) after all these years!</p>
<p>apparently my[parent’s] house is worth $753,333</p>
<p>holy christ</p>
<p>Neat feature, but apparently only available for some major cities. Couldn’t get pics for my present home or childhood haunts – but the 6 room, 1200 sq. foot cottage that my ex & I rented in SF, and where my son was born, is now valued at $1.8 MILLION. This was a teensy wood frame house which had 2 tiny bedrooms, one bath. Landlord evicted us back in 1985. Yikes. </p>
<p>(Now you know why I am relegated to home ownership in the burbs).</p>
<p>[edit] OK, now this makes no sense. I just checked the 4 bedroom, 5400 square foot mansion on the corner right next to my former SF cottage… and that is valued by Zillow as only $1.4 million. How can the teeny cottage be worth $400K more than the mansion??? </p>
<p>I’m going to start swallowing Zillow stats with a great big tablespoon of salt. </p>
<p>In any case, there is a real live sale of an even teenier house (1000 sq. feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bath) on the same block in Dec. 2005 - $1.1 Mil – which probably better represents the true picture.</p>
<p>the house we moved from when I decided I didnt want to raise my babies in the burbs is rated at $563K that isn’t really very much considering that it was a pretty nice neighborhood and the lot is more than double the size of our city lot. I see that zillow has the homes on either side rated 100K & 200K more- maybe they have been remodeled.</p>
<p>A fun site but all of the stats for my neighborhood were quite low considering what homes have been sold for lately.</p>
<p>yeah i like that site a lot, however it is way off in some cases. it lists my one friends home at around 170k… a big 5000 square foot home … its beautiful and on 1 acre of land… yet my other friends house which is about 2000 square foot on half the land and its half as nice (in the same area) is listed at about 340k.</p>
<p>EllenEast says it: fun, but not very useful.</p>
<p>I love the valuation of my house, but the have taken away one floor and a bathroom. Wonder where they went. I also didn’t realize that our house was that small in terms pof square footage.</p>
<p>LOL, tsdad. Not here, still searching for my two extra floors and an additional bedroom and bath! </p>
<p>Does anyone else find those bird’s eye photos a little unsettlling? It’s truly amazing to realize the amount of info that is accessible online today. Forget about unlisted numbers (I have one for what it’s worth, which is zero), there are sites that dig up public records to publish everyone’s home address and phone number. And now it appears that anyone can come to your virtual doorstep!</p>
<p>Wait until the photos are realtime.</p>
<p>I test drove a “2007” car yesterday. All the gadgets and doodads make me feel like Archie Bunker ( o/~ Boy the way Glen Miller played… o/~ ). The guy was boasting about the navigation system so I threw a curve…suggesting D’s college, 3000 miles away. It took about 15 seconds before an aerial schematic of the college & surrounding area came up. All that was missing was a blinking red dot to indicate her position. (What’s she doing <em>there</em> when she’s got a final in two hours? LOL.)</p>
<p>It is very Creepy.</p>