Home Valuation Websites - Accurate or Not?

With the explosion of real estate websites and blogs has come the even greater explosion (it seems) of real estate valuation sites. Real estate valuation sites offer real estate information to consumers including maps of neighborhoods, prices of homes and everything in between. Many people are visiting sites like Cyberhomes, Real Estate ABC, etc., and in a lot of cases they're looking to especially find out how much their homes are worth. But the question is: Are these sites offering accurate information or not? To answer this question I've chosen a subject property dear to my heart (it's my own) on which I've pulled up a few comparables in my neighborhood in the Tuolumne MLS to give me a ball-park price. That price is $220,000. And now let's see what price a few of the home valuation sites give me. Here goes:

Subject property: $220,000

Zillow: $285,000
Real Estate ABC: $216,000
Eppraisal: $275,000
Cyberhomes: $279,000
Homegain: $268,000
Bank of America: $221,000
Housefront: n/a

And so we discover two of the home valuation sites I chose to use (Real Estate ABC and Bank of America) were close to the price I thought my home was worth based on my personal research (B of A almost exactly!). And I guess the moral of the story (from a non-real estate agent point-of-view) is that you still really do need a real estate professional's expertise if you want accuracy when it comes to buying or selling. Call your Sugar Pine Realty agent for help today. (A portion of the idea for this post came from: Doughroller.net.)