Home Values Falling, Consumers Going Online for Property Appraisals

Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) February 21, 2007 -- Electronic Appraiser (EA), the most accurate source of property valuation information available to consumers online, reported today that traffic to its ElectronicAppraiser.com website is surging as reports proliferate that property values across the country are continuing to fall. EA is the industry's leading provider of automated valuation model (AVM) reports to consumers each month through its website.

Electronic Appraiser is a Florida-based technology and data reporting company with a primary focus on the valuation of residential property. Since 1999, Electronic Appraiser has provided property valuations for both consumers and institutional clients. Its reports are based on the nation's largest property databases and include monthly sales information on millions of properties throughout the nation. MSN Money called the service the most accurate of its kind in a 2006 report.

"For the past five years, real estate values in the United States have been growing at better than 9% per year, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), but that's not what people are hearing out there," said Greg Sullivan, president and CEO for Electronic Appraiser. "While the rate of appreciation has slowed, we haven't seen a geographically broad drop in home values in this country, but people hear the news and they worry. Then they go online to find out what their homes are worth."

Sullivan pointed out that people are generally more concerned with the value of their real estate in a market that is trending downward. That translates into increased use of valuation analytics, which is exactly what his firm has witnessed over the past 12 months. Electronic Appraiser has seen a marked increase in business in 2006 -- on the order of 20% -- over previous years.

Despite the fact that consumers are seeing troubling reports in the media on a daily basis, most experts say the real estate industry is not in trouble. In its 2007 Residential Mortgage Market and Its Economic Context research monograph, Mortgage Bankers Association, Washington, said it expected to see a "soft landing" in the market by mid-year. In his January monthly commentary, Fannie Mae Chief Economist David Berson said he expected to see only a modest negative home price appreciation in the nation by year's end. However, there is a rising uneasiness in the market and it's evidenced by increasing traffic to online home valuation websites like Electronic Appraiser.

"Consumers are looking for some economical method to gauge the values of their real estate investments," said Sullivan. "For most Americans, their home is their biggest investment and they are more eager than ever before to track its value."