Eppraisal Charts its Way Forward

Eppraisal.com pushed out a major new release of its site today which you can read more about on Realty Thoughts - eppraisal’s corporate blog.

Eppraisal prides itself in having the largest database of homes in the US with over 120 million property records (compared to Zillow’s stated 70 Million and Cyberhomes’ 100 Million). I have no idea if these figures are accurate, but at the end of the day, it’s not really a question of size but rather, whose database is more accurate…

This new release adds several new features to the site. Taking a cue from Terabitz - eppraisal’s home page can now be localized to display information from a particular zip code. Unlike Terabitz however, eppraisal does not let you choose which information you’d like to display or give you the ability to change the display order. Nor does it let you share that with others.

Entering your home in the search field, pulls up eppraisal’s familiar map interface with a selection of comps (pulled from public records, no MLS integration) displayed below it.

For your home’s valuation, eppraisal has chosen to return a value range, rather than an exact dollar figure like Zillow or Cyberhomes. While probably a safer route to go, it somehow feels less fulfilling.

To run a quick comparison, I took eppraisal’s middle number as being the closest estimate to my home’s value and then compared it to Zillow and Cyberhomes estimates - and it was nice to see that all three fell roughly in line with each other.

Whether any of them is a fair estimate of my house’s worth is probably best left up to an expert, but at least it gives me a rough baseline to work from.

The biggest addition to the new eppraisal.com seems to be addition of lots (and lots) of dynamic charts. The charts seem to graph just about every data-point eppraisal could find.

And while they certainly are pretty (the animation is slick) I struggled to find the relevance of some of the data being presented to me. No averages for example, or comparison to the subject property. Eppraisal just pushes out the raw data in graph form - and I still have to do all the manual calculations if I want really to get anything out of them.

One graph that I did really like however, was the current market index (under the Market Insight tab), which they chart back 12 months. Very handy if you want to get a general sense of the direction of the market in your town.

Another new addition to eppraisal is the Lifestyle tab, which pulls up a demographic profile of your zip code. They display profiles (definitions are from the market research firm Claritas) to give you a sense of who lives in your neighborhood (just in case you didn’t know). Unfortunately, they chose not to reveal the actual breakdown of the different segments, rather choosing instead to highlight the top five profiles in no particular order. My neighborhood broke down this way:

• Executive Suites
• Movers & Shakers
• Upper Crust
• New Beginnings
• Young Influentials

It actually seemed pretty accurate if I were to compare it to the people I know on my block.

But this tab and the Employment tab seem a little superfluous to me. The information, while mildly interesting, is not necessarily critical to any decision I might be making. Do I really care that there weren’t a lot of museum technicians in my neighborhood, for example?

When eppraisal really sings though is with it’s speed. As I played around with the site, I remarked (to no one in particular) that it felt much faster than the others I’d been using. My informal and unscientific testing bore out this hunch - I tested my house (i.e. typing in the same address) three times and timed how long it took to return a full page of results. I averaged the three scores to come up with the following results. YMMV.

Bottom line. Eppraisal was faster than Zillow and Cyberhomes is dog slow.

This is a pretty solid release for eppraisal. Its speed makes it a decent alternative to Zillow and Cyberhomes - especially if you’re just looking for quick valuation data on a property. However its research tools still feel a little lightweight, so if you’re looking for something with greater depth, I’d recommend sticking with one of the other two.

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