4 sites to get quick home estimates

Here are 4 sites that will give you a quick estimate of a homes value: Zillow, Cyberhomes, Coldwell Banker, and Bank of America. I found these links in an article on the My Money Blog site.

I plugged my home address into these sites and they gave the following estimates of the value:

Zillow: $232,00, range $208,800 - $241,280
Cyberhomes: $229,482, range $206,533 – $263,904
Coldwell Banker : $200,400 to $271,200
Bank of America : between $205,500 and $254,300


Zillow: This site is the one I am most familiar with. I've used it a lot in the past. They give a specific estimate number they call their Zestimate and thats the number that sticks out on their report. They also give a range of prices that falls around the Zestimate. Zillow has a couple nice features including an ariel map of the neighborhood and street level picture of the home made from Google maps. They also have charts showing the prices for the specific address, zip code and city over periods of 1 year or 5 years. If you dig into the data you can get a list of comparable home sales. My result had about 50 homes sold over the past year.

Cyberhomes: This site looks a lot like Zillow. They have about all the same features as Zillow. They give a specific price and a range, there are maps showing aerial and street level views, they have graphs of the home values over time and they have a long list of comparables.

Coldwell Banker: The result is just a range and it was fairly broad. They have 3 ways to get an estimate. First you can talk to a broker and I didn't bother with that option. I first tried the second option 'Live Market Watch' which gives the broad price range. The 3rd option they call 'Recent Sales' and they gave a list of 10 comparable homes that have sold in the past 3-4 months.

Bank of America: This site gives just an approximate range. It lists comparables that have sold in the neighborhood but for my example they seem a bit dated. My result got 3 homes from 12/07, 3/08 and 4/08. So that data is 8-12 months old at this point.

Personally I like Zillow the most, though Cyberhomes is also pretty good. If you're looking for a rough estimate of your home's value then you could get the results from all 4 of these sites and take an average. Given the numbers I got, I think its a pretty safe bet that my home is worth something around $220,000 to $230,000 and the range is very likely between $200,000 and $240,000. Of course every house is different and your home may have features that make it more or less valuable. So you should take these numbers as a rough estimate only. If you want a real estimate then you would need to hire the services of an appraiser.

Dollar Cost Averaging example from Suze Orman

Previously I had an Example of Dollar Cost Averaging where I discussed how DCA can help you even out market ups and downs to avoid some risk in the market. A little while ago I caught an episode of the Suze Orman show where she gave an example of Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA). In her example she had $1000 invested every 3 months into Vanguards S&P 500 index fund from August 2000 until August 2008. On August 2000 the fund was trading at about $140 and on August 2008 it was at $120. If you had invested that $1000 every quarter you would have a total of $36,102 as of August 2008. So even though the market started at $140 and was down to $120 eight years later your investment with DCA would still be 9.4% more than the $32,000 total that you had invested. If you had plopped $32,000 into the market on August 2000 then you'd have about $27,428 or about 14% decrease. I verified the numbers myself looking at the S&P 500 index value.

This is just an illustrative example meant to capture how DCA is meant to work. You might notice that the example ends in August 2008 and we all know the market has suffered since then.

Will a Chevy Volt be a good buy?

I've been pretty interested in the concept of the Chevy Volt car that is supposed to start selling in 2010. The car is supposed to run off an electric battery that would drive electric motors to power the wheels. It would also have a small gas engine to act as a generator to recharge the battery if needed. It is in our nation's best interest to decrease our use of foreign oil. Switching to electric powered cars would be a good step towards that goal.

I've assumed that driving a Volt running on electricity would be cheaper than a gasoline powered car. How much cheaper would a Volt be to operate? Would the gasoline savings from a Volt alone be worth its cost?

The Wikipedia page for the Chevy Volt has some detail on pricing and specs. Much of this information is still preliminary and may change, but its the best info I can find.

Right now they are saying that the Volt will cost $40,000 new but qualify for $7,500 in tax credits. That would make the net cost $32,500. They say that the battery will get you 40 miles and it holds 16 kWh of electricity. So for the first 40 miles of travel between charges you should be able to go on full electricity without using any gasoline. Personally my electricity is about 10¢ per kWh and I only drive around 10,000 miles a year. I figure 90% of my driving is made on days when I drive 40 miles or less in a day. So 90% of my driving would be electric only. At 10¢ per kWh it would cost $1.60 to charge the batter and drive 40 miles. So the cost would be 4¢ per mile. Right now my car gets 25MPG and gas is about $1.70 a gallon so thats 6.8¢. I could however switch over my electric charges so that I pay less during off peak hours and then charge the car at night. If I did that then I could pay just 4¢ per kWh at night off peak hours. That would give me a cost of only 1.6¢ /mile to drive the volt on electric.

I figure I would save roughly $500 a year in gas costs with a Volt compared to my current car.
If I sold my current car I'd probably get about $10,000 for it give or take. If I then bought a Volt at $32,500 I'd be spending $22,500 to upgrade to the Volt.

My Verdict: Spending $22,500 is not worth saving $500 a year. Based on the savings in gasoline buying a Chevy Volt is not worth the extra cost.

I could put that $22,500 in the bank and make 3% interest for $675 a year.

What if I just bought a Prius instead? A Prius will get me 50 MPG and if I drive 10,000 miles a year then it will run be about $340 a year for gas at $1.70 a gallon. Thats half the cost of my current car.

A Prius would save me $340 a year in gasoline compared to my current car. I could buy a new Prius for about $24,000 which would be a $14,000 upgrade. The Prius would be a better buy than the Volt.

For purely financial reasons the gas savings of a Volt is not worth the cost. The Volt would have other benefits such as reducing our usage of foreign oil, but thats more a matter of personal choices and priority than a straight forward financial gain so the benefit of that would be very subjective.

The Dollar Stretcher

I came across this site: The Dollar Stretcher They have tons of tips and articles on saving money on a variety of things. Their index of topics covers a ton of different categories.

The site has been around since 1996 so some of the articles are a few years old. Most of the ideas are still just as applicable today though.

The site has a lot of money saving info, so check it out.