FHA Mortgage Guide

Realtor.com has come out with a new home valuation tool which may well be the most advanced we have seen to date.

Realtor.com says it’s valuation tool has data concerning 80 million homes, including 4 million now for sale and 38 million previous sales.

If you go to the site you first see a map of the U.S. with average sale prices for each state. Press the state button and you can see the average list price, days on the market and sale. You can also see the number of listings in the state and their average sale price.

Next, type in a street address with city and state. The result is a great map showing the property and nearby houses that are for sale or have recently sold. A little box that gives the estimated value, square footage, number of bedrooms and year built. Then press “more details” and you can see a fuller description of the property, the lot size, the assessment history and taxes paid by the owner.

In the estimate box, press “graphs and trends” and you can compare the home value of a particular property with the ZIP code, city, county and state — either the average or median prices.

Press “comparables” and you can see homes currently for sale and past sales.

As much as I like the new tool — and I like it very much — it still includes all the inherent limitations of a computer-based system. To really know the value of real estate you have to physically walk the property and tour the home. All the exterior photos in the world can’t tell you if the heating system is 40 years old or there’s an odd smell in one part of the house.

The FHA, to its credit, insists on actual appraisals to determine property values before agreeing to insure an FHA mortgage. You, too, should insist on an appraisal by a real, live appraiser and you should physically examine a property and the neighborhood before making an offer.

Realtor.com says “an Estimate represents a computer generated value based on publicly accessible property records and should not be used as an appraisal report. A REALTOR® specializing in your area will be able to provide a more accurate valuation based upon current market trends and specific property and neighborhood characteristics.”

That’s exactly right.

To try the new system, go to the home valuation tool at Realtor.com.

Check out these FHA resources for more information

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 2:03 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.