Baron Briefs

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.

I asked my first question on Yahoo! Answers earlier this week. Unlike news groups, the responses were rapid: 10 possible answers within 20 minutes. Not bad. In fact, I kept returning to read what others were asking. Here’s a short list of what I learned this week in the real estate section:

1. Foreclosure isn’t the end of the world. You have eight…yes, count ‘em, eight possible options
2. A negative amortization mortgage isn’t scary when loan officer explains it…then asks for your business
3. You’re not just being paranoid if you’re mortgage broker won’t call you back
4. Real estate investors will be flooding inner city neighborhoods next
   
5. Maybe you should just rent when you move in together