Yahoo! Real Estate added two new online appraisal sources—Reply! and eppraisal.com—to their home value section this week. They join Zillow to form a home value estimates “trifecta” for consumers.

In my opinion, this is a big win for eppraisal.com. Just recently, eppraisal.com moved into the top 100 of real estate sites on the web according to Hitwise. Now, they will share “shelf space” with two competitors who each have millions in VC funding. Congratulations to Erik Hersman and his team over at Realty Thoughts on yet another victory.

So, rather than appearing as a quick and nimble entrepreneur, I get to appear as an “us too” and prematurely announce our new answer service, RealAnswers(TM), with a side-by-side comparison to Zillow’s new Home Q&A. That’s right. RealtyBaron quietly launched an answer service alongside our home search, RealSearch(TM), way back on January 5th. The purpose is to—you guessed it—answer questions about homes.

Here’s how it compares to Zillow’s new Home Q&A:

Since then, RealtyBaron’s mission has become clear: “help affiliated real estate agents get to the closing table as much and as quickly as possible”. In other words, if an agent is signed up with RealtyBaron, I want to help that agent close as many deals as possible because it only strengthens our platform to have closers associated with us.

As a result of this mission clarity, I re-launched the ad generator yesterday. Like the old version, the new ad generator automagically provides “color, stylish formatting, and unlimited image hosting”. The new version, however, does not require the agent to copy/paste any code. In other words, the tool allows for seamless ad creation and publishing to Craigslist. Other online classified sites such as Backpage and LiveDeal are in the pipeline.

Here’s an example ad:

HedgeStreet’s website describes their hedging instruments as a way consumers can “speculate the degree to which their home will appreciate, or conversely, hedge against depreciation in the value of their home”. But I’d be willing to bet (no pun intended) they’d increase trading volume rapidly if they pitched to real estate agents as a way to hedge asking prices. For example, Joe Realtor could suggest a slightly higher asking price for a listing and place a bet against rising prices using HedgeStreet.

In any event, I think HedgeStreet is a cool idea and hope it gains more traction this year whomever the traders may be.

Estimates generated by IntelligentValue(TM) are composed of price opinions from homeowners and real estate agents in the area in which the property is located. Properties are shown randomly and include an exterior photo, feature descriptions, and an interactive map for easily identifying location. Opinions are applied to estimates daily providing real-time feedback to property owners.

The feature, called IntelligentValueâ„¢, was removed from the website last year for retooling. It will relaunch next month so don’t label us as copycats when you see it again.

And there’s no shortage of voices against Realtors on the web. Read the comments section of any bubble blog or browse the real estate section of Yahoo! Answers and you’re bound to run into Realtor backlash. Besides NAR and the individual Realtors themselves, nobody tells the other side. So, I now present a small sliver of the other side.

The endorsements below were received in a matter of 24 hours on behalf of one Realtor who signed up with RealtyBaron.com:

It’s hard not to believe this Realtor goes the distance for all his clients. Bottom line: hard-working, ethical Realtors do exist. You just have to know where to look.

Atlanta	1,462	1,496	2,693
Boston	242	498	1,240
Chicago	2,420	10,023	9,199
Dallas	744	332	1,950
Denver	411	1,358	1,186
Vegas	5,050	3,264	3,336
L.A.	369	2,686	4,023
Miami	1,950	8,770	10,375
Phoenix	2,128	6,802	4,063
Seattle	298	3,470	751
S.D.	1,038	3,238	5,519
S.F.	75	468	1,186
D.C.	603	720	2,374
**NOTE: 15% added to Trulia numbers to account for no FSBOs in results.

Was this a scientific comparison? No, because it doesn’t consider the quality of the listing data. For example, Trulia’s or Propsmart’s search algorithms may exclude listings from their index if the listing is missing data points A, B, and/or C. As a result, the total number of their results would be lower. Regardless, it was nice to visualize how RealtyBaron’s RealSearchâ„¢ sizes up against the incumbents.

…2.7 million at last count. But if the number changes, you’ll know immediately now that our search form shows the total size of Vast’s dataset.