I think they are hugely popular…or were during the hot market frenzy. Everytime I went to a store to get stuff for staging a property the checkout person and people in line kept saying, “Oh, I see this on HGTV!” They just love the whole concept of the makeover shows. I myself was quite moved by the makeover of the Kirkland house and it’s airing at The Performance Center with the donatee family present.

Have you seen the show? I was wondering if after the agents guess the after value, they test the accuracy by actually selling the house.

Come to think of it, they may have asked me to be on the panel for a month, as I remember thinking NO WAY do I want to be “The Simon” of a Real Estate “Reality” show. We all know I’d be “The Simon”

I wouldn’t use Zillow “as accurate data reference”, especially on my house that has been known to bounce up and down by over $150,000 overnight. But after I value a property by other means, I like to check the Zestimate for fun. My Zestimate was $1,070,000 when I first decided to sell it and thought I’d list it for $999,950. Now I’m thinking more like $949,950.

I totally agree about beating the doubling back over 05 prices. I also agree that it hasn’t appreciated 15% from the peak of the market, but the peak of the market was in the 3rd quarter of 2007 if you look at the charts. We’re currently down 4.3% from peak. We were up 19.5% from mid 2005 to peak, and now were down to 15% up.

the bubble that was created beginning 02-03 was artificial, and we are on the backside slide toward normalizing prices. your home hasnt actually appreciated 15% since the height of the bubble unless youre able to sell it at your predicted appraisal. and if youre able to do that, id do it before we double back over 05 prices and continue the trend down.

I don’t watch hgtv. Too much like my everyday life. It’s like watching the Sopranos How they made such a huge deal of a guy reaching into the fridge for some capicolla…

Last year HGTV asked me to do a show, host for a month actually, where we valued property after an owner made improvements. Too much of a WAG for me. Has anyone seen that show? Do the guesses at after-improvement value make any sense?