The Wisdom of Crowds

There’s lotsa places you can go online to get help estimating the value of your home – Zillow being probably the best-known – but The Front Steps real estate blog recently posted about an appraisal site with a new twist, HomePredict.com.

The site tracks how the market in your area is performing, but the innovative part is that you help it do so (what is referred to variously as crowdsourcing or the wisdom of crowds).

The site displays estimates of prices per square foot for houses in your ‘hood for next month, four months, seven and ten months from now underneath + and – signs, and you click to add or subtract value. (Mashable spotted this interesting approach too, and we thank them for the screenshot.)

Perhaps you are wondering whether some smart alec will click, like, 1,735 times to add value so his/her house will sell higher.

That fear is “valid only in circumstances where there are not enough participants – that is, where his or her opinion is artificially large. A real possibility in the short-run but over time, people looking to demonstrate expertise will just seize markets that result from manipulation or poor information actors and ‘correct’ them as a means of raising their own community standing,” said CEO Karim Tahawi in response to similar concerns expressed on The Front Steps.

Well, I believe in the wisdom of crowds, so tell me, my favorite crowd – what do you make of this site? Will it be a useful tool?