Appraisal Services on the Web Come Up Short

After reading “Pricing’s Tangled Web” by Jennifer Oldham (July 30), about obtaining estimates of a home’s value over the Internet, I thought I would try the three services you evaluated.

Actually, I had already tried HomeGain and kept the results. They listed my house as being built in 1970; I saw it being framed in 1972. They listed a “reference sale date” for the house as March 1991; I bought the house in the summer of 1973 and still own it. (In 1991, I changed the form of title from joint tenancy to community property as part of my estate planning.) They listed the house as having one story; anyone standing in the street in front can see it is a two-story house, which is the way it was built. HomeGain listed two bathrooms; with three rooms containing toilets and sinks, the house has at least 2.5 baths.

This time I tried the other two services. Domania has a privacy policy that assures users they will have no privacy. They state: “ . . . user profiles may be shared with our partners and/or third parties.” Not having any appraisal of my own within their short history span, I could not get a current value from them. I suspect Domania is more interested in collecting marketing data from users. I’m glad I gave them an e-mail address that I rarely use.

HomeAdvisor claimed there were insufficient data to create a value for my home, despite several home sales on my block over the last two years.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park