You know what they say when it seems too good to be true. Witness the latest internet/real estate fad of websites that pretend to give you the value of your home (or your neighbor's). It may not need pointing out, but the premise upon which such websites operate, that setting the value of a house can be reduced to a mathematical computation by someone who has seen neither your house nor the recent sales, is fundamentally flawed. As I have pointed out elsewhere, 90% of pricing a house is subjective: these websites generally use the County tax records for such items as square footage, bedroom/bathroom count, lot size, pool or not, etc. Completely ignored are important characteristics like how good the view is, how recent (or lavish) the remodel, how desirable the floor plan, how flat the lot, how old the roof -- and myriad other considerations whose value can only be judged from inside the property, run from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and simply do not lend themselves to being plugged into some formula as a fixed value, dreamed up by someone sitting in a cubicle at a computer keyboard. For example, if you had just spent $100,000 to make your kitchen the envy of Martha Stewart, would you want the same value assigned as your neighbor who installed new fronts and slapped down a piece of granite just before selling? And if you need a good laugh, call me and I'll give you the County tax records on your house -- you may not recognize it.

 All of which begs the question: why do these sites exist? Ah Grasshoppah -- follow the money. They a) sell advertising to lenders and the like, and b) sign up realtors who could be in Palomar as easily as Palos Verdes, and who pay the operators a fee and will be contacting you (cue evil laugh). I don't think this is how you want to select the person who will handle what may be your largest asset.

I promised to always give you the unvarnished truth, and this definitely qualifies. Call me at 613-1076 for more straight talk.