Lets take a look at the choices and models available to you.

HouseValues.com: HouseValues.com counts on home owners to answer about two dozen questions, which are then forwarded to a local real estate agent who pays for the lead. Agents prepay for service areas. When request are received by HouseValues.com, they are farmed out to the agent for the area. These leads are assigned to Agents that prepay a monthly amount to secure an area or selected zip codes. According to reports regarding HouseValues.com "A weaker residential housing market has hurt. The end of the speculative boom is making homeowners, resale renovators, and condo-flippers less interested in knowing what their homes are worth. Cash-strapped Realtors are backing out of the program." This leads to the question, how accurate is the values that a home owner ultimately gets from the system? and what is the motivation of the agent to provide an accurate value?, a topic that will be covered in just a moment.

Zillow: As puzzling as where they got their name is where they get the data from. Countless stories have arisen regarding the wrong information being recorded about properties # of bedrooms, bathroom, size, etc. No weight is given for overall condition or improvements. There own website states the following: "Our data shows that the majority of our Zestimate home valuations are within 10% of the selling price of the home. Of course, to a certain extent this depends on the accuracy of the home data we receive." 10% is the difference between your home selling and your home sitting. Fact is, with the average Sale price of Northern Virginia Homes for Sale being $507,546.40 in June of 2007, that is an amount of over $50,000 that the Zestimate could be off.

Homegain.com: A lead generation engine for realtors like Housevalues.com. Inquiries from homeowners are posted to the site that Agents post resumes to, allowing the home owner to "compare agent". Homegain takes a minimum of one third of the commissions from the listing agent as a "referral fee" leaving the agent with very little money or incentive left to spend on attracting buyers to your home.. This leads to Agents given a proposed listing value that is over the market value or at least higher than the other homegain agent proposal in an attempt to buy a listing, home it will someday sell, trying to secure the agreement to sell This ultimately could cost the homeowner money.

Consider what happens when a house is put on the market for sale, the initial wave of prospective buyers is the most important. When a house is overpriced, they categorize the home as overpriced, they move on to other properties & the Homeowners end up having to eventually dropping the price below market value just to get the attention of the market again.

All this becuase the agent was trying to gain favor or recover upfront cost (Housevalues) or cover referral fees (Homegain) in the end.

A Comparative Market Analysis performed by a Local Realtor: Best bet is to have a comparive market analysis performed by a local real estate agent with specialty and expertise in your particular market & area. A good CMA lays out the comparison of the owners home to other homes that have recently actually sold and it also provides an opportunity for the Agent to show the techniques & marketing strategies that they will use to ensure that the home owner gets top dollar.

Truly, This approach also makes economic sense to the homeowner because the agent is not paying out as much in upfront or backend cost to a 3rd party intermediary that has no stake in the transaction. More dollars can be directed towards the promotion & exposure of your home to the marketplace & potential buyers, ultimately netting you more money, which is really what most home owners are looking for in the first place.