Ask Cyberhomes: The estimated home value for my house on the Cyberhomes website is incorrect and doesn’t reflect recent home renovations. How do I go about correcting the estimate?
Answer: Since our new blog went live in September, we’ve received a few questions about Cyberhomes’ valuations from our readers.
You can refine your home’s estimate on Cyberhomes with a few easy steps. The Cyberhomes database includes more than 100 million property, ownership, sales and mortgage records, covering more than 85 percent of the U.S. population. Much of our home-value evaluations are based on publicly available facts.It’s likely, however, that you know more about your property than what is publicly known about it. Information about your house that you can supply — such as recent renovations or additions — can modify our estimate of your home’s value.
To get to your home’s property page, click on the “Find My Home” tab at the top of your Cyberhomes page and type in your home address. Clicking on “Change Home Value” will allow you to fix any inaccuracies listed for your property and to note recent home improvements, to possibly impact the estimated value of your home.
To note a home improvement, choose the type of home improvement (e.g., major kitchen remodel or deck addition) from the pull-down menu and add in the completion date and total cost of the project.
Cyberhomes’ valuations are based on a complex process and a variety of data, including those that reflect local housing market trends and economic factors. So in some cases, changes to your home’s facts won’t alter its estimated value.
For instance, the facts about my home on Cyberhomes included the size of the house and the lot, but didn’t include the number of bedrooms and baths or total number of rooms, and incorrectly listed my house as a single-story home.
I refined the facts to note the correct number of bedrooms and baths, number of total rooms and that my house has two stories (we’ve made no major renovations since we’ve owned the home), only to find that doing so didn’t increase (or decrease) the estimated value of my home. Home values in my ZIP code are down just over 10 percent over the past 12 months, according to Cyberhomes. This is not surprising considering the state of the housing market and the economy, but disappointing all the same.
This doesn’t address the issue of incorrect information about bedrooms, square footage, etc. that are used to calculate the baseline estimate shown for the house. Sure, if the person clicks on the house they can see the corrected information, but up front they see a bed estimate. In my case, updating just the bed and bath information increases the value of my house by 35%. I don’t see a place to let everyone know that there is central air and a host of other improvements, like an attatched garage with a workshop. The simple fact is this site is used by banks to determine loan elidgibility, and now I have to call them back and let them know why your estimate is wrong and that yes, my house is worth appraising to see if I can’t grab a 5% interest rate.
Hi, Nathan. If you increase the number of bedrooms, square footage, etc., on your home’s page on Cyberhomes, that should postively affect your home’s estimated value. You can also note home improvements and the value of the improvements. If your home improvement isn’t listed in the drop-down menu, choose “other.” Then describe your home improvement, and note its cost. I hope this helps.
I totally disagree with the appraisal process! This website is off at least 40-50K on my house and it cost me a refinance. After hours on the phone with my mortgage company, I finally was told that they got my home value threw this website. I asked them to tell me how many bedrooms my house had and they couldn’t. I can’t believe that a banking organization would use this website for such data.
Hi Allen,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. First of all Cyberhomes is not an appraisal. Also as mentioned in this article, we have built in tools for you to adjust the homes value is you see incorrect information. Did we have the physical characteristics correct on the home? I want to look into our estimate with you.
Reggie
I recently had my house appraised for $181k and closed on the refi in May 2009. Yet it is listed by cyberhome with a value of $134k; the lowest within the subdivision. Note: there are aprox 4 models very similar in style, sq ft, land, etc that are valued $10k to $30k higher on the same site Cyberhomes and my house is in a cul-de-sac, new paint, carpet etc….. I know there’s a science to the process here but it’s very strange. It’s significantly lower than all other houses. I’m not upset because I know it was recently appraised, I’m more disappointed in Cyberhomes because there is no venue to present this for them to review or double check their algorithem, stats, or whatever public records they use. I’m just at a loss for the significant delta. I would question it if my house appraised for $250k likewise as I know per my appraisal it’s $180k. The only thing I noticed was that the bathrooms were listed as 2 when the house has 3.5 but that would only account for an upswing of $10k. it would be nice to submit a request to revisit the findings.