ChitownLiving | Chicago Real Estate + Life

I was all set to add Reply.com as one of the resources I recommend to my readers.  The site has received recent coverage in The Future of Real Estate Marketing post entitled, Reply vies for the Real Estate 2.0 crown.  The new Reply.com will provide online home valuation much like Zillow.com.  Before recommending any site I always do a test drive. Yahooooooooooooooooooooo! Reply.com tells me my home is worth an astonishing $1.7 million.  I am going to retire today.  And now back to reality. In all fairness they do indicate the site is Beta but it is so far off, about $1 mil too high, I can’t recommend it.  Very easy to see what is going on here.  Seems that Reply.com is simply crunching numbers on all sold single family homes in the area and then spitting out a number.  You can’t do that in Chicago.  The type of home is too varied.  My house is frame and can’t be compared to one of the new construction, multi million dollar, solid masonry “castles” popping up like mushrooms.  In addition the search capability is primitive.  The site does not seem to be able to correctly identify addresses with compass corrdinates or specific condo unit numbers in them.  Maybe they will work these things out in the next release. At least Zillow gets the value in the ballpark, or at least a nearby ballpark.