Zillow: How Much is Your Home Worth?

I have a stack of things I want to post here at Cashtalk, but I've been quite busy with other commitments. One of the oldest that has been staring me in the face from the cover of "Fortune."

The story is about a neat program that I had looked at a couple of months ago called Zillow. Not only can you search for homes that are for sale, but it offers some unconventional tools as well.

Zillow allows you to virtually look at houses in your area and find out their "zestimate." This is an estimated price based on surrounding sales and closures on houses. You can see what your house is worth, or what price the people you know may have paid for their home or could sell their home for.

There is also an interesting feature called "make me move," which allows you to post the amount you would accept for your house today even though it isn't technically for sale.

You can upload your own data to improve the database. According to the article I read, most of the East and West coast are populated with zestimates. The Midwest and South are slowly catching up, but there isn't as much of a real estate craze there to drive the demand.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Iowa City One of the 10 Best; Affordable Places to Live

This is a long overdue post, but hopefully it will be the jump-starting of a more regular postings.

This article sent to me by Chiara, talks about 10 locales around the country that offer a low cost of living, good prospects for work and a high quality of life.

Iowa City has made the list and I found the statistics about it quite interesting. It seems around here, everybody is trying to figure out how to revitalize downtown or find out new ways to get people to come work here.

According to the article, we have a 2.7% unemployment rate (4.6% is the national average) and 5-year job growth has been 12.33% compared to 4.9% across the rest of the country.

Read the article and find out if your locale made it to the list!