Out of curiosity, and in case I need to get a home equity loan (you can tell I am paranoid right now about something else breaking in the house!), I wanted to see what my home’s current value might be. I went to zillow.com and checked out what their estimates were. This last year my home’s value went down 9.4%! Fortunately, since we bought the house in 2004, the house has increased in value by 23%. So we are fortunate that we are not underwater; in fact our house has appreciated over that time span.
Our current mortgage is for only about 67% of the current value of our home, so if we had to (which I am hoping we do not), we probably could get a home equity loan.
I don’t check often, but I do like to go to zillow just to see the trends of our area and what’s happening with housing. It’s not a bad tool to use as you are making financial decisions.
