Posts from July 2018

No! Using a website such as Trulia or Zillow (where you'll get a "Zestimate") is OK if you want a starting point for the value of your Roanoke or Smith Mountain Lake home, but even then, you need to take it with a grain of salt.

Third-party real estate sites aggregate listings from all over the country. An algorithm analyzes the listing data and produces an estimated home value.

So what's the problem?

Well, as Realtors, we see it all the time: A seller comes in and tells me what the real estate site said her home in Southwest Roanoke County was worth. Then I go out to do the comparative market analysis and arrive at a list price that's far more or, more troublesome, far less. Of course that causes frustration for the seller, who has been making plans based on the website's estimate.

Here's what I...

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