Home Prices In My Neighborhood - Where Can I Find Them?

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The economic crisis has made homeowners increasingly concerned with home prices. How do I know this? Well, aside from the obvious reasons, I keep track of search engine trends. It helps me provide the kind of information people are looking for the most. And lately, a lot of people are searching the phrase home prices in my neighborhood (and variations of that phrase).

I have good news and bad news. Let's start with the bad. I just read an article on Bloomberg.com that suggested home prices would continue to drop until the latter half of 2010 -- at least, in most parts of the U.S. This creates concern among homeowners for several reasons:

• People who plan to sell their homes in the near future (perhaps due to a job transfer) are worried they won't be able to sell.
• People who wanted to refinance their mortgage loans in the near future (perhaps to escape their ARM loans) are afraid they might be upside down in their mortgages.
• People who don't plan to move or refinance are also concerned, because a drop in home prices means a loss of equity.

This is why so many people are researching home prices in their neighborhoods lately. And it brings us to the good news I mentioned earlier. Thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to find home prices in your neighborhood. I should be more specific. It's easier than ever to find recent sales data for homes that have sold in your neighborhood.

"Enough with the introduction," you say. "Tell me where to find home prices in my neighborhood already!" Without further ado, here are 5 ways to find house values via the Internet.

1. HomeGain.com
This website offers a wealth of information, tools and resources related to home buying. You can shop for houses, find a real estate agent, and yes ... even find home prices and recent sales data. Start here: What's Your Home Worth?

2. HouseValues.com
You can probably figure out what this website offers just from the name. You guessed it! The provide property value information based on recent sales. This site is also a big lead-generation tool for real estate and mortgage folks, so there's a good chance you'll get some phone calls and/or emails after using it. Just an FYI. But it's a way to find home prices in your neighborhood via the Web, so it deserves a spot on this list.

3. Zillow.com
This is another one of the companies that helped pioneer the world of online home valuation. You can get a "Zestimate" of how much your home is worth, based on data from recent sales in your neighborhood. There's also a ton of home buying and selling information on the site.

4. Domania.com
I can't think of anything unique to say about this website, other than it offers similar tools to those listed above. In fact, they all do pretty much the same thing. I know the individual companies argue over whose service is superior, but let's face it ... they all give home prices based on the same kind of neighborhood sales data.

5. Local Agent Websites
With a bit of digging, you should be able to find some good information on the blogs and websites of local real estate agents. You'll have to find the sites that get updated often, so a Google blog search might be the best place to start. Some agents update their sites daily or weekly, with plenty of information about home sales and prices in your neighborhood.

So there you have it, five places to dig up pricing information for houses in your neighborhood. Clearly, these are not the only website that offer such information -- just some of the best options out there.