Pity the poor folks at Zillow ... first they face an FTC consumer complaint (legitimate or not, it still exists) and now the folks at Realty Thoughts have released eppraisal.com, their online home valuation tool. At first blush, there are two noticeable differences:

1) For better or worse, the site is far less elaborate than Zillow. No property maps, none of the extra bells and whistles (some of which are the cause of Zillow's headache with the NCRC.) Just a relatively barebones platform.

2) Unlike Zillow (and avoiding another of the Z's possible headaches), eppraisal provides a range of property values versus one magic value.

One of the primary criticisms about Zillow, both from the recent complaint and in the general real estate realm, is the way the public has perceived their "zestimate." Zillow has said all along that these estimates should only be used as starting points when determining a home's value, but if you provide somebody with one pat number they're likely to believe it as fact.

There is one thing that both Zillow and eppraisal.com have in common - there's no guarantee the numbers are going to be close to accurate. Zillow has estimated my own home at around $295K the last time I checked. Eppraisal now has raised the range to around $325K. I'll take either figure, but I also know that the market value of my home is a bit less than the z's guess and a lot less than eppraisal.com's.

For more on the release of eppraisal.com ...

Eppraisal.com Kicks Zillow While They're Down from the Future of Real Estate Marketing.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes