Both Zillow and Trulia offer some great tools for consumers. And they are mostly accessible without needing to register and get on a mailing list that clutters up your inbox. The one I like the most from Trulia is their Local Info Heat Maps. These maps help someone get a visual and geographical representation of the numbers. This can be extremely helpful to those not intimately familiar with the neighborhood names. You have several points of data at your disposal and Home sales prices and rental prices are two of them.
Zillow has a great feature that can give you historical values or “Zestimations” (based on their own algorithms) . These can be quite handy when looking for trends or comparing between areas. Just go to their “Local Info area” and drill down to the cities you want to see and compare. And then you can refine it further by neighborhood. Remember, these are mostly median numbers and sometimes they are off a good bit. Your REALTOR can get you more accurate evaluations based on your specific criteria. But for just side-by-side comparisons this can be a great tool to gauge where a market has been, and where it is going, in general terms. There are lots of other variables and data points to play and make charts with as. If you are a statistics person you will love this stuff. Let me know if you need deeper or more specific information!
