eppraisal.com goes local

Eppraisel.com is one year old today. They’re celebrating by relaunching their real estate portal with fresh graphics, new tools and an additional focus on local markets.

“Today’s real estate environment requires that buyers and sellers understand the market trends that will help them make the most of their investment. Buying and selling today is about looking at property values over time and understanding whether your town, or the town you want to move to, is following the trend or bucking the trend,” said Damian Scott, eppraisal.com president. Eppraisal satisfies these needs with a new suite of new web tools.

The new Market Insight page is a data junky’s dream. As I noted in an Inman post last April, eppraisal.com offers a range of values instead of a hard and fast number. The value range is still there, but it’s now complimented with a median sales index, including a 12 month trending graph that compares the visitors researched local market with national statistics. They also include price-per-square-foot data, a snapshot of the typical age of the homes built in the neighborhood, and charts that show the visitor what zip codes are the best and worst performing concerning real estate values.

Eppraisal has also teamed up with RealtyTrac to provide all sorts of foreclosure information for each neighborhood. Among the foreclosure date, a reader can use the Total Savings tool to compare purchase price savings between foreclosed and retail properties on a local and national level.

Lifestyle Profiles is another tool that adds a bit of fun to the otherwise boring world of demographic data. Eppraisel teamed up with the marketing group Claritas to identify the heartbeat of each neighborhood. A visitor can get an idea of the type of housing, the median age, and how likely the neighborhood will be to offer their child some playmates. There’s also trend information on population and crime.

I really like the profile data, but I can’t help thinking about how teaming up with a community review driven site like Yelp would further paint a picture of what a neighborhood is really like.

The third new tool is eppraisal’s Employment page. Here a reader can find information on the most common occupations, salary comparisons and unemployment rates.

Eppraisel also offers information on schools and recent sales, plus mobile tools, maps, and lots of easy to read graphics.

What I’ve always liked about eppraisel is that the site works as a conduit to direct it’s visitors to a professional for more information. The existing referral network of 50,000 appraisers remains, but they’ve also added referral tools for buyers and sellers to find real estate agents, and some time next week, they plan to announce a new mortgage piece to compliment the new site.