How to find out home values?

[susienj]

I'm not afraid of Zillow. It just isn't reliable on current on giving current home prices.

[Global Friend]

Is Zillow accurate?
See here:

Yahoo! Answers - How accurate is zillow.com?

If you hire a buyers agent, you can get an accurate CMA. They can look up houses that sold in the last six months in your area. The three things that matter most are; location, heated sq ft and lot size. They can compare your house to other houses similiar to yours.

[JoeValueNJ]

Make sure you look at the comps that agents give you in a CMA. Very often they put active and under contract listings in there to support the value.

Make sure that you only pay attention to sold listings within a mile, Similar Lot Size, Similar Sq.Ft and similar design and appeal.

[leavingqueens]

Originally Posted by kshum88

Thanks for all your responses. My concern is that as I am the buyer, the real estate agent is not really working on my behalf (She is representing the seller). If I ask for her market analysis and the current market value of the house that I am interested in buying, she will just give me the listing price, which we all know that it was priced higher intentionally most of the time. How do I negotiate a fair price with the Seller without paying $30 to domania.com? I pay the $30 if I have to but just want to know if there are other alternatives.

I would also like suggestions. I have gone to all the sites mentioned here, but they don't appear to say the square footage or how many bedrooms -- so it's really hard to compare. If I subscribe to any of these, such as property shark or dominia, will I be able to get this info?

Also, I was checking out a site called Trulia.com -- and the first time I logged on they gave me the date houses were listed -- so I could see if they had been on the market a while. Now when I log on they don't give me that info. Can I ask my realtor to find that out for me? I am a little wary of trusting realtors, I must admit. The realtor who just sold my apartment was really kind of wacko -- and everyone I've encountered since doesn't seem completely with it, either.