Those databases must be a few months old.  I wonder how often they are updated.

BoA sez...

Valuation Range  Highest - $194,000  Lowest - $141,000 
Year Built: 1950
Lot size (sf): 17,860
Living Area: 1,813
Stories: 2
Total Rooms: N/R
Bedrooms: 3 (actually, converted basement romp room into a bedroom, so this is now 4)
Bathrooms: 2
Garage: n/a (yes)
Pool: Yes
A/C: No  
DiTech sez...

 
High Value Estimate: $194000 
Low Value Estimate: $141000
The price is probably 10-15k too low IMHO.  Doesn't take into account:

- Brand new furnace
- Brand new driveway
- Totally rebuilt pool
- New roof
- Siding and windows
- Finished sunporch
- New 200amp electrical service
- Landscaping
- Remodeled downstairs bathroom

  All that since I bought it in 97.  Damn..7  years...

Actually, my property is not too bad.  .42 acres of which I'd say .4 of it's is usable.  Rest is protected wetlands (in back left corner..).  Better then my neighbor.  His lot is slightly bigger, but almost half is protected wetlands..

Want to know how much your neighbors paid for their home? 

Ditech's page will tell you!

You can also find out what the home is valued at (low & high appraisal)
sneaky, sneaky! 

hmm, I take it bargainshare isn't on daylight savings time?

Lot (sq ft): 6098
Dwelling Area (sq ft): 2246
Bedrooms: 3
Baths: 3
Last Sale Price: $247,500.00
Last Sale Date: 09/13/2002 
High Value Estimate: $416,000.00
Low Value Estimate: $366,000.00

Wrong on the bedroom count. We would have 5 but elected to build with master bedroom suite and therefore have 4 bedrooms. It was appraised for $428,000 in December 2004.

ditech can't quite keep up with sharply rising home values in CA. Homes this size are currently listed for 450-470k. The house next door with 1880sf is at this moment listed for $429,000

Property Address:    1691 21st Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122-3333
Lot (sq ft):  1750
Dwelling Area (sq ft):  1591
Bedrooms:  N/R
Baths:  1
Stories:  1
Last Sale Price:  $700,000.00
Last Sale Date:  12/02/2003
High Value Estimate:  $1,040,000.00
Low Value Estimate:  $890,000.00

Referral Madness
As desperate agents pay for your e-mail address, new Internet middlemen are profiting

It seems so simple. You want to find out how much your home is worth, or what your dream house will cost you? Just log on to the appropriate Web site and type in your name, e-mail and phone number, as well as the kind of information you want, and then, as if by magic, "they" will send you that information free.

Simple? Don't bet your 40-year mortgage on it.

In the hard-sell carnival otherwise known as the residential real estate market, many innocent bystanders don't even know when they are being lured into the big tent and made the center of the show. But every time homeowners -- struck by a passing case of what's-my-house-worth fever -- sign up at HouseValues.com for a free "no obligation" report, they've stepped across the threshold and, in effect, become the $300 million-plus corporation's most valuable asset. And every time maybe-someday home buyers register on RealEstate.com in order to access the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), chances are it won't be long before they feel the hot breath of a hungry real estate agent on their virtual necks.

Welcome to the land of referral madness, where every looky-loo is a "hot lead" and every dude with a mortgage a "motivated seller."

The real estate business has always had a side in which valued customers are cultivated like crops or hunted down like gold nuggets. Pioneer metaphors abound. Traditionally, real estate agents have, as they put it, "farmed" a territory by sending out postcards or letters to homeowners in a given neighborhood. Any kind of marketing blitz is known as prospecting, and the potential client is a prospect.

Now that the Internet has transformed the industry, and every Curious George can do real estate research, the industry's lead-generation and referral niche has exploded -- all based on the consumer's simple, often capricious query for "free" information. Most average civilians -- unschooled in the real estate world's guerrilla tactics -- are never aware of how this business works. And I suppose that's as it should be. Whenever you give your information out on the Internet in exchange for some service or piece of information, there's always the chance it will be sold willy-nilly, leading to increased spam and phone solicitations.

But the story here is not one of privacy infringement so much as it is the way real estate -- traditionally a deeply individualistic, personalized business based on individual agents connecting with individual clients -- is changing because of technology and a glut of underworked agents. And for those of us fascinated by the swarming underside of the real estate universe, there's no better view than the burgeoning (and sometimes bogus) business of selling your e-mail address (or perhaps a fake one you made up for the occasion) to a needy agent near you.

The different kinds of business models proliferate like bacteria on a slab of meat. Some companies, such as Submitsolution.com, set up a personal (and generally overpriced) Web site for agents so that potential clients can search the MLS or obtain a home evaluation through the agent's site. Others sell Internet-generated mailing lists of doctors or lawyers in a given area and simply call them leads. Finally, many businesses, like HomeGain.com, sell Internet-generated leads for a nominal fee but then require 30 percent of the gross commission of any deal they originate.

Among the most successful and head-scratchingly simple of the lead-generation outfits, Housevalues.com sells leads with a management package -- software for generating personalized newsletters and generic e-mail, as well as access to real estate coaches and seminars. Housevalues.com prices its leads according to the median price of the homes in a given area, so prices vary widely. For example, agents in San Francisco are paying anywhere from $369 to $999 for 10 leads a month with a 12-month contract, but many choose to buy 20, 30 or more leads. Thirteen thousand agents subscribe to the service, so this is big business. Last year, after going public on Nasdaq, the company was named one of the 10 fastest-growing technology businesses in the country, and its valuation is over $300 million.

In essence, however, what the company sells are the names and e-mail addresses generated from its two generic consumer portals. On the main site, www.housevalues.com, homeowners can input information about their home and request a free home evaluation. The business will send the information on to an agent who has paid for leads from his or her geographical location and will create a report for the homeowner based on comparable prices (comps). The only thing the agents get out of it is the homeowner's contact information, the knowledge that the person might be thinking of selling and the chance to interact with a potential client. And on Justlisted.com, customers enter home-buying criteria, and, in exchange, an agent sends them automated e-mails with listings of houses that match their criteria as they hit the market.

A lot of controversy has swirled around these models. For instance, many real estate agents aren't particularly happy with the notion that the MLS, arguably the industry's most valuable asset, is being given away by a third party like Homegains.com, only to make money off the real estate agents who created the MLS in the first place. Among local real estate agents I spoke to, the whole lead-generation industry has a less-than-stellar reputation.

"We've tried several services, and they've been extremely unsatisfactory," says David Zylinski, sales manager at Keller Williams Realty, who adds that he sampled various services so he could recommend them to new agents in the office. "The leads are too old -- and, frequently, they don't call back."

Zylinski subscribed to Valuemyhouse.com, which promised a minimum of six leads over the course of a year, to the tune of a few hundred dollars. After a year, however, his office had received only two -- including an out-of-town request for a three-bedroom house in San Francisco for under $300,000.

After Zylinski sent some scathing e-mail to the company, he was eventually notified that it would try to rectify the situation. "They were all a total waste," he says of the services. "I can't recommend any of them. You could walk out the door and bump into more [prospective clients] on the street."

Natasja Angenent, an agent with Prudential California Realty, on Market Street, had a similarly disappointing experience with Submitsolution.com. After four months, nearly $900 spent and dozens of "hot leads" that turned out to be fake e-mail addresses, she had not contacted a single potential client. In the end, however, she concluded that San Francisco is not a city where such generic marketing would work. "I thought the people [at Submitsolution.com] were very decent," she said. "I think it just works better for people in more suburban areas."

"Basically, it's really a joke," says Romeo Aurelio, manager for Century 21 in the Richmond District, explaining that many corporate real estate agencies already have their own referral services. "Often, the information is piggybacking on something else -- unbeknownst to the customer, who just thinks they're entering a contest."

The services do have their boosters, though to find them, you may have to contact company PR firms first, as I did in the case of HouseValues.com. Catherine Gortner, a San Jose agent who started her own office just 18 months ago, is extremely happy with her experience. She says she grossed about $200,000 in commissions from her Housevalues.com leads in 2004. But such leads were not exactly cheap; she says she shelled out 15 to 20 percent of these commissions to get her leads.

For its part, Housevalues.com says agents love its service of providing exclusive leads within a support system that helps agents work leads by becoming better marketers with what is described as the company's "comprehensive system." As Matt Heinz, the company's senior marketing director, puts it, "With HouseValues, agents know they will meet prospective home buyers and sellers each month, plus get access to all the tools, training and coaching they need to help build a strong real estate business. The system is based on allowing consumers to make the first contact, then helping agents build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with prospective buyers and sellers."

How this approach affects the average consumer is difficult to ascertain. Who cares whether Homegain.com gets a giant chunk of the already excessive commission? Why should we mind if our humble, perhaps flippant real estate inquiry gets turned into hard cash by a publicly traded company? In a sense, we shouldn't.

But I can't help but think that all this back-room wheeling and dealing only adds to the expense of real estate for the consumer. It definitely adds to the hogwash factor -- just another industry predicated on a lot of fake e-mails.

Yet it does make me wonder. These real estate services have discovered a value most real estate consumers didn't know they possessed. Maybe they offer the perfect bargaining chip for the rest of us. After all, if Homegain.com can claim a 30 percent referral fee for access to my e-mail, why shouldn't I?

Metro area  Median home price  5yr change in avg home price  Growth forecast to June 2006
United States  $190,000  65.1%  7.1%
New York/Northern New Jersey/Long Island/Connecticut       
  New York City  $435,000  91.2%  12.6%
  Nassau/Suffolk, N.Y.  $440,000  92.1%  11.6%
  Newark  $330,000  79.0%  11.4%
  Bergen/Passaic, N.J.  $390,000  81.9%  11.3%
  Middlesex/Somerset/Hunterdon, N.J.  $318,000  87.4%  11.1%
  Monmouth/Ocean, N.J.  $328,000  97.0%  11.3%
  Jersey City  $300,000  114.2%  N.A.
  New Haven/Bridgeport/Stamford/Waterbury/Danbury  $335,000  69.7%  9.0%
  Trenton  $230,000  83.4%  11.0%
Los Angeles/Riverside/Orange County       
  Los Angeles/Long Beach  $442,000  122.3%  5.0%
  Riverside/San Bernardino, Calif.  $329,000  137.3%  4.5%
  Orange County, Calif.  $610,000  126.3%  6.8%
  Ventura, Calif.  $550,000  122.6%  5.8%
Chicago  $254,000  49.6%  8.6%
Washington/Baltimore       
  Washington  $385,000  107.4%  13.9%
  Baltimore  $140,000  85.3%  14.2%
San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose       
  Oakland  $535,000  96.3%  13.3%
  San Francisco  $750,000  67.7%  13.6%
  San Jose  $619,000  63.0%  13.9%
  Vallejo/Fairfield/Napa, Calif.  $449,000  125.1%  13.8%
  Santa Rosa, Calif.  $500,000  107.8%  13.2%
  Santa Cruz/Watsonville, Calif.  $599,000  86.2%  13.0%
Boston/Worcester/Lawrence/Lowell/Brockton  $339,000  73.6%  8.0%
Dallas/Fort Worth       
  Dallas  $137,000  23.1%  N.A.
  Fort Worth/Arlington  N.A.  23.5%  N.A.
Philadelphia/Wilmington/Atlantic City       
  Philadelphia  $180,000  71.0%  11.7%
  Atlantic/Cape May, N.J.  $249,000  112.6%  9.4%
Detroit/Ann Arbor/Flint       
  Detroit  $160,000  24.3%  4.3%
  Ann Arbor  $225,000  28.1%  1.2%
Houston  $136,000  25.2%  N.A.
Atlanta  $188,000  25.2%  6.4%
Miami/Fort Lauderdale       
  Miami  $240,000  106.1%  15.3%
  Fort Lauderdale  $257,000  105.8%  16.3%
Phoenix/Mesa  $190,000  53.1%  17.7%
Seattle/Tacoma/Bremerton       
  Seattle/Bellevue/Everett  $315,000  38.1%  9.1%
  Tacoma, Wash.  $212,000  36.9%  4.2%
Minneapolis/St. Paul  $225,000  63.2%  7.4%
Cleveland/Akron       
  Cleveland/Lorain/Elyria  $153,000  20.0%  4.3%
  Akron  $148,000  17.5%  0.7%
San Diego  $554,000  138.3%  5.9%
St. Louis  $129,000  38.1%  N.A.
Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater  $172,000  70.8%  14.7%
Pittsburgh  $108,000  31.1%  N.A.
Denver  $250,000  33.3%  6.0%
Cincinnati/Hamilton       
  Cincinnati  $172,000  18.9%  4.0%
  Hamilton/Middletown, Ohio  $182,000  20.5%  3.2%
Portland, Ore./Vancouver  $226,000  36.6%  9.8%
Sacramento/Yolo       
  Sacramento  $376,000  131.1%  17.1%
  Yolo, Calif.  $379,000  140.9%  17.4%
Kansas City, Mo.  $149,000  30.8%  N.A.
Orlando  $195,000  60.6%  14.3%
Indianapolis  $113,000  18.8%  N.A.
San Antonio  $123,000  24.8%  N.A.
Norfolk/Virginia Beach/Newport News  $168,000  60.9%  N.A.
Las Vegas  $285,000  107.0%  N.A.
Columbus, Ohio  $172,000  22.7%  3.7%
Milwaukee/Waukesha  $199,000  40.5%  N.A.
Charlotte/Gastonia/Rock Hill, N.C.  N.A.  19.1%  N.A.
Salt Lake City/Ogden  $155,000  -0.2%  0.0%
Austin/San Marcos  $151,000  24.9%  N.A.
Nashville  $139,000  19.3%  6.4%
Providence/Warwick/Pawtucket  $257,000  111.7%  17.7%
Raleigh/Durham  $186,000  18.9%  N.A.
Hartford  $228,000  54.1%  8.9%
Buffalo/Niagara Falls  $95,000  27.00%  N.A.
Memphis  $126,000  11.5%  3.2%
West Palm Beach/Boca Raton, Fla.  $282,000  98.0%  21.0%
Jacksonville, Fla.  $154,000  57.4%  N.A.
Dayton/Springfield, Ohio  $135,000  15.1%  0.3%
Fresno  $243,000  129.1%  N.A.
Tucson  $179,000  46.6%  8.5%
Albuquerque  $146,000  13.3%  1.4%
Knoxville  $121,000  27.3%  7.0%
Bakersfield, Calif.  $195,000  114.1%  N.A.
Toledo  $124,000  19.7%  0.6%
Youngstown/Warren, Ohio  $90,000  15.0%  1.8%
Springfield, Mass.  $182,000  64.1%  10.5%
Sarasota/Bradenton  $229,000  83.5%  17.0%
Stockton/Lodi, Calif.  $370,000  126.9%  21.8%
Daytona Beach, Fla.  $153,000  79.9%  22.0%
Lakeland/Winter Haven, Fla.  $133,000  46.5%  9.8%
Johnson City/Kingsport/Bristol (Tenn./Va.)  $90,000  16.2%  4.8%
Lansing/East Lansing  $134,000  33.0%  2.9%
Modesto, Calif.  $305,000  140.5%  15.2%
Fort Myers/Cape Coral, Fla.  $124,000  92.1%  15.1%
Canton/Massillon, Ohio  $129,000  16.7%  2.2%
Salinas, Calif.  $526,000  136.2%  N.A.
Santa Barbara/Santa Maria/Lompoc  $445,000  147.9%  N.A.
Visalia/Tulare/Porterville, Calif.  $190,000  86.1%  N.A.
Fort Pierce/Port St. Lucie, Fla.  $280,000  99.8%  13.7%
New London/Norwich, Conn.  $226,000  71.9%  6.3%
Naples, Fla.  $300,000  109.3%  22.4%
San Luis Obispo/Atascadero/Paso Robles, Calif.  $475,000  137.7%  11.3%
Merced, Calif.  $270,000  126.2%  16.6%
Clarksville/Hopkinsville (Tenn./Ky.)  $95,000  15.3%  4.2%
Chico/Paradise, Calif.  $250,000  119.6%  15.2%
Burlington, Vt.  $226,000  62.7%  7.8%
Barnstable/Yarmouth, Mass.  $369,000  115.7%  5.6%
Punta Gorda, Fla.  $154,000  98.1%  17.5%
Pittsfield, Mass.  $165,000  57.8%  11.1%

San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose     
  Oakland  $535,000  96.3%  13.3%
  San Francisco  $750,000  67.7%  13.6%
  San Jose  $619,000  63.0%  13.9%
  Vallejo/Fairfield/Napa, Calif.  $449,000  125.1%  13.8%
  Santa Rosa, Calif.  $500,000  107.8%  13.2%
  Santa Cruz/Watsonville, Calif.  $599,000  86.2%  13.0%

If you have MLS numbers, you can search on them at http://www.realtor.com