We have an rental property that we had a full blown appraisal on about 90 days ago.  It came back at $315,000 which is about what I expected given that it does not have the showroom ready curb appeal that I would want if listing it for sale.  While testing out Realtor’s Property Resources site I used our property to check out its functionality.  Why stop there?  I checked, Zillow, Trulia, SmartZips, and the tax record to see what they had to say:

• Zillow: $310,273
• Trulia: $329,000
• SmartZip: $322,200
• RPR: $349,000 [range of $309,901-$410,799 and a note that the value was last update 11.18.12 which is about the appraisal date]
• Tax Record Market Value: $285,940
• Tax Record Assessed: $126,060.

Overall they’re pretty close to the appraisal, which like all of these, is a matter of opinion.  The public records run on the low side because we’ve owned it since 1998, haven’t done any remodeling work requiring a permit, and are protected by Oregon property tax law.  The appraisal came back lower than we needed for what we want to accomplish so we’re going to do some work that needs doing anyways before having a second appraisal.  It will be interesting to track what the work costs versus the change in value.

I like this graphical representation from SmartZip.  We can generate both a home owner and investor report: