I’ve used zillow.com for several years to maintain a general feel for the direction of real estate prices.  There have definitely been times where I’ve questioned its veracity, but for the most part it seems to provide a reasonable approximation of market values.  It’s been helpful at times in my business and it fulfills my curiosity about pricing in different areas of the country.

At some point, without knowingly requesting it, I started receiving “Zillow Home Report” emails for two houses that my wife and I own.  These messages were not especially welcome because - almost without exception - they’ve merely served as a reminder that home values were decreasing in the neighborhoods where the houses are located.  Of course, this has been true just about everywhere, and I didn’t opt out of the emails because they are not too frequent, and I really would like to know if values take a truly dramatic dive.  Note that in my definition of “dramatic”, that has not actually happened yet.

Today I checked my Inbox and there were two Home Reports from Friday.  They brought news that I’ve now forgotten ever seeing:  in Zillow’s estimation, both homes that we’re tracking increased in value!  For several reasons, this information is essentially meaningless.  Most importantly, I do not intend to sell either home any time soon.  Also, Zillow can do little more than aggregate data from various sources, and the service has no insight into how upgraded our houses are relative to others, etc.  Nonetheless, the information is another in a small collection of feeble indicators that support what I’ve firmly believed for awhile now - better days are ahead.