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Consider the following models and the potential drawbacks and benefits that each presents.

HouseValues.com: HouseValues.com counts on home owners to answer about 20 plus questions, which are then forwarded to a local real estate agent who pays for the lead. Real Estate Agents prepay for service areas. When inquires are received by HouseValues.com, they are assigned to the agent for the area. These leads are assigned to Agents that prepay a monthly amount to secure an area or selected zip codes. According to reports regarding HouseValues.com "A weaker residential housing market has hurt. The end of the speculative boom is making homeowners, resale renovators, and condo-flippers less interested in knowing what their homes are worth. Cash-strapped Realtors are backing out of the program." This leads to the question, how accurate is the values that a home owner ultimately gets from the system? and what is the motivation of the agent to provide an accurate value?, a topic that will be covered in just a moment.

Zillow: As puzzling as where they got their name is where they get the data from. Countless stories have arisen regarding the wrong information being recorded about properties # of bedrooms, bathroom, size, etc. No weight is given for overall condition or improvements. There own website states the following: "Our data shows that the majority of our Zestimate home valuations are within 10% of the selling price of the home. Of course, to a certain extent this depends on the accuracy of the home data we receive." 10% is the difference between your home selling and your home sitting. Fact is, with the average Sale price of Northern Virginia Homes for Sale being $507,546.40 in June of 2007, that is an amount of over $50,000 that the Zestimate could be off.

Homegain.com: A lead generation engine for realtors like Housevalues.com. Inquiries from potential home sellers are posted to the site that Real Estate Agents post resumes to, allowing the home owner to "compare agent". Two potential flaws to the system. Homegain takes a minimum of one third of the commissions from the listing agent as a "referral fee" leaving the agent with very little money or incentive left to market your home. This leads to Real Estate Agents given a proposed selling value that is higher than the marketplace or at least higher than the other agents proposal in an attempt to placate the owner, trying to secure the agreement to sell This ultimately could cost the homeowner money.

When a house is listed for sale, the initial wave of buyers is the most important. When a house is overpriced, they categorize the home as overpriced, they move on to other properties & the Homeowners end up having to eventually dropping the price below market value just to get the attention of the market again.

All this becuase the agent was trying to gain favor or recover upfront cost (Housevalues) or cover referral fees (Homegain) in the end.

Add to this that all of the previously mentioned systems are online based systems. A computer for an online evaluation has not way of telling the condition of the property & how it actually compares to those that are currently listed or recently sold. Your Local Real Estate Professionals CMA: Best bet is to have a comparive market analysis performed by a local real estate agent with an expertise & specialty in your particular market & area. A good CMA lays out the comparison of the owners home to other homes that have recently actually sold and it also provides an opportunity for the Agent to show the techniques & marketing strategies that they will use to ensure that the home owner gets top dollar.