Just out through our eppraisal.com Labs, eppraisal Mobile is an easy way to access property valuations while on the road. Simply text an address to 972-413-9622 or to values@eppraisal.com (in the subject line), and eppraisal.com will respond with an estimated value range of the property.

By texting the street address, city and state, eppraisal.com will respond with an estimated value range for the property. More information about the property, neighborhood, or connections to local real estate professionals can be gained by visiting www.eppraisal.com.

Let us know what you think!

[Preface: All the normal disclaimers about using sites like compete.com, Alexa or Quantcast to get trending data…]

Regardless, it’s still enjoyable to watch the trending continue upwards for eppraisal.com. We’ve had a lot more room to grow than the others, true, but we’re starting to catch up. The great part is that our burn rate is much lower than everyone else. In fact, our company is entirely profitable on it’s own, thereby allowing us to continue to grow eppraisal.com at a slower pace knowing that we’ll be here for the long haul.

In our quest to provide true value-added services for consumers, eppraisal.com has launched a home inspector network. We have partnered with the country’s oldest and most respected home inspector organization, the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) to provide this service.

Anyone can enter in their zip code and get back a list of home inspectors in their area.

Through this partnership eppraisal.com has launched its National Home Inspector Network where consumers gain immediate access to more than 6,000 home inspectors across North America. With the new ASHI partnership consumers can quickly locate a professional home inspector to provide an evaluation of a home’s physical structure and accessible components of a home, including central air conditioning systems; interior plumbing and electrical systems; the roof, attic and much more.

This is in line with our other offerings for professional services. Now on eppraisal.com you can take advantage of our Appraisal Network and our Home Inspector Network.

Since 1976, ASHI has worked to build consumer awareness of home inspection and to enhance the professionalism of its membership. The ASHI Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics serves as a performance guideline for home inspectors, and is universally recognized and accepted by many professional and governmental bodies.

We’re proud to announce that eppraisal.com has partnered with Yahoo! Real Estate in their completely revamped home valuations section.

Michael Yang, GM of Yahoo! Real Estate:

Yahoo! Real Estate is dedicated to delivering comprehensive real estate resources and information on the Web. For our Home Values Center we brought together the top home valuation data from across the Web, including eppraisal.com, so that our users can have immediate access to key home valuation information.

When you search for a property on Yahoo! Real Estate, you will now get back 3 results. One from eppraisal.com, Reply, and Zillow. You can click through any of these results to get the detailed property, neighborhood and valuation information directly on one of the websites.

I had a chance to chat with Steve Schultz, Director of of Products for Yahoo! Real Estate, about why they have redone their Home Valuations section, and what they hope to achieve with it. He gave me three reasons for this move, all revolving around end users:

1. A more complete picture in one convenient space.
2. Enhanced content for buyers and sellers on why to sell/buy a home. This was done through folding in Yahoo! Answers.
3. Provide more local connections. Integration of Yahoo! Local into the system for better business connections and appraisals.

We’re excited about the partnership, and welcome all of the new Yahoo! users to eppraisal.com.

Hitwise has ranked eppraisal.com in the top 100 of real estate sites on the web. That’s exciting news for us here at eppraisal.com, a reason to celebrate a little, thus the badge I just created.

Getting to be a part of the top 100 is significant for us, since we just launched at NAR in November of last year. We’re working to make sure our product gets better all the time. Most recently we have offered the ability to get a “real” appraisal via our appraiser network, and we’ve just finished a complete website redesign.

Here’s a small excerpt from the article, you can read the rest at Inman:

Making the top 100 list is a significant achievement because those sites hog more than two-thirds of traffic in the category, or 69.6 percent, according to Hitwise.

Two sites that came out of nowhere to break into the top 100 were eppraisal.com and the MRMLS Central Site, Hitwise reported.

The site eppraisal.com, which uses public records to generate automated home valuations and provides referrals to real estate professionals, debuted at number 50 in April. MRMLS (Multi-Regional Multiple Listing Service Inc.), a provider of MLS technology and electronic data exchange between member associations, was ranked the 65th most visited site by Hitwise. Neither site was ranked in March.

We’re continuing to diversify our offering and make sure that we have great information for anyone looking into information about their property. Look for more great things soon!

I just got back from putting on a 2 hour real estate blogging workshop with the Orlando Regional Realtor Association (ORRA). Even with the size of the room (100 people) the RSVP list for the event got so big that we had to turn some people away. To those who couldn’t attend this event, we’ll let you know when we put on another one.

I covered the basics behind blogging and social media, the reasons why it’s important to know about and start participating in the conversations, and how to get started. The attendees had some great questions that told me they were not only interested in the topic, but were going to be taking part in it soon.

So, thanks to everyone who attended, I hope to see your blog online soon (or at least see you begin commenting). A special thanks to ORRA for telling everyone about the event and supporting it through the use of their facility.

[UPDATE: I'm excited to announce the first new blogger from our session. 2 days after, Debra Horowitz has started Orlando's Avalon Real Estate blog - Congrats Debra!]

We’ve just released another group of new features for eppraisal.com. Once you’ve created an account, you can start tracking your search history, saving property as favorites and get full appraisals from registered real estate appraisers. Look for more over the next couple of weeks as well!

You’ve got Favorites
You now have the ability to save favorites and track them over time once you’ve registered. Add a property to your favorites by using this icon: . Over time you can track the changes in your property’s value.

Your Property Search History
Can’t remember the address of the last property you searched 2 days ago? Well, your last 5 searches are now saved in your profile. This, along with the “current search” link in the header of every page make it a lot easier to make your way around the website.

Full Appraisals
We used to just allow exterior appraisals, with this new release, you can now get a full appraisal of your home by a registered real estate appraiser. You can order it all online through our system. Either search for the property and click on the button to get started, or just go to the “Appraiser Network” link on the homepage.

Below is a list of blogs and traditional news media covering eppraisal.com’s changes:

Another twist in online home valuations – Inman News

Eppraisal.com just launched its redesign with an apparent focus on leveraging the weaknesses of their competitors. The online valuation site offers visitors the ability to get an idea about their home’s value, then go on to order a certified appraisal from a nationwide network of licensed appraisers.

Eppraisal Offers Drive-by Appraisals You Can Take to the Bank – Sellsius Blog

A certified appraiser, who has partnered with eppraisal, will do a visual inspection of the outside of your home and run neighborhood comparable sales and listings to determine the estimated market value for your home.

Drive-by’s in the New River Valley – NRVLiving

as much as I love gadgets and technology and use them everyday as much as I can, I still don’t think we can replace the human element that an appraiser provides.

…and a couple of extensions.

To say that things have been busy around here would be an understatement. The whole eppraisal.com team has been burning the midnight oil to ensure we were able to release our faster, better looking and more enticing version of eppraisal.com.

Besides the complete redesign, you can now enjoy the following features:

Appraisal Network – We’re partnered with professional appraisers across the country so that you can now not only get your snapshot view of what your home is worth (the eppraisal), but also get a professional appraisal that you can take to the bank!

Neighborhood Information – the first phase of our improved information on neighborhoods is now available. This primarily consists of schools both on the school district level and detailed information on the elementary, middle and high schools in the immediate area. The neighborhood informatio also consists of basic demographic data put into graphs for easy readability.

City Overviews – eppraisal.com now offers overviews for almost every city in the US. (Below is a completely random snapshot of Gatlinburg, TN) The city overview covers demographic data in graphs on the population, household and education.

120,000,000 Homes Nationwide – Our database has grown and we now have access to the largest database of properties in the country.

Other changes and improvements:

• eppraisal.com Labs – try out our new Firefox extension. We’re also working on a few more widgets, so check back here soon.
• Local weather information
• More comps for each property searched
• Search history (if you have an account)

Dumb Little Man is a website full of “tips for life”. They have an article titled “Selling Your Home: 10 Questions I Asked When Choosing an Agent“. Here is one of them, read their article to read the rest:

Q. Why are you saying my home is worth $400K when I think its worth $325K?
A. We do an analysis so we know what similar homes are selling for in your area (which is BS for we run a little query on home sales within .5 miles from your home).
TIP: Ask to see the comparisons (called “comps”). High volume agents may be motivated to list your house too high because they don’t need the quick commission. An new agent may list a home too low just to sell it quickly and get paid. Bottom line is that it’s your house and you need to do homework to ensure you’re asking the right price. Do not simply take their word for it.

(Read the rest, they’re all pretty interesting.)

Of all of the questions, the one I mentioned here is of import to us at eppraisal.com. How each of the parties, agent and seller, find out the value of the home is completely different. Many home sellers will look up services like ours and get a ballpark figure to work from. More studious ones will actually go out and get a licensed real estate appraiser to do the work. Either way, self-education on your own home’s worth is a good thing to do.

As far as agents are concerned, we hope that they’re doing more than an eppraisal too. Just like the writer of these 10 tips, we want to believe that our agent is heavily invested in our property and doing the right thing for us.