HouseAmerica hopes to be a Zillow-like site that will give you the value of your home, anywhere in America. Of course both sites don’t yet have every home, but they have a ton of them.
One major difference between the two sites is that Zillow will give you an estimated value (Zestimate) of your home, while HouseAmerica will give you a value range.
Another is the membership HouseAmerica offers. They want people to pay a $4.95/month or $49.95/year subscription fee to “monitor up to three properties” and get a monthly statement.
In the searching I have done Zillow tends to be more accurate, and more visually appealing.
Zillow definately has the “buzz” advantage over HouseAmerica, and pretty much every other real estae website in the world. Everyone talks, jokes, analyses, discusses, and blogs about Zillow- including me.
HouseAmerica also seems to be positioning itself to add mortgage to its site- their tagline says, “Changing the way people buy, sell, and finance real estate” and their homepage is basically a copy/paste of Zillow.
Of course, both of these sites are only a starting point of getting an accurate assessment of a home’s value and entertainment. Neither should be used as the sole method of determining a home’s value. Use a good Realtor for that.
I learned out about HouseAmerica from Future of Real Estate blog- thanks Joel.
December 24, 2007 at 6:59 am
Zillow is still just a tool for sellers in the beginning of the sales process eventually most sellers will hire a pro.