land22 REAL ESTATE

Half of All Homeowners May Be Paying Too Much.  Here's What You Can Do About it.

Home prices are still going down in many markets. But your property-tax bill might well be going up.  The good news: There are ways to fight back.

Zillow (NASDAQ: Z) is an online real estate database that was founded in 2005 by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia.  The website uses a proprietary algorithm called the "Zestimate" to appraise property values based on undisclosed factors.  

Popular Home-Price Web Site Often Get's It Right but Can Be Way Off The Mark, We Find

In the year since its launch, Zillow Inc. has made millions of Americans familiar with computer-generated estimates of home values, created a new online addiction and become a staple of dinner-party chatter.

A new study shows how short-term housing speculators made the housing bubble much, much worse.

An old pearl of wisdom from the Great Depression held that investors should have known it was time to sell when shoeshine boys started handing out stock tips. The day traders of the late-1990s were a recent version of the same phenomenon. When the dumb money is rushing into the market, it’s probably a smart time for you to bail.

A rich narrative that blends social commentary with incisive reporting, House Lust offers an astute, funny, and sometimes disturbing portrait of the behaviors that drove the greatest real estate boom in history—and its eventual bust.