You’re right, people should worry about things they can change, or that are currently affecting their way of life. but it’s also good to keep tabs on property values, and using Zillow can be a decent tool to do that. But there are no hard and fast values for the property market, so relying on one source may not be the best way to go.

In the first place, Zillow is not accurate. In the second place, “Zestimates” are solely based on comps, which in this instance are not comps: it takes the prices of auctions on the courthouse steps as the same as sales of clean, well maintained houses; and this skews the weight of the actual resale prices that speculators get when they turn the places around.

The shack across the street from me, which was a certifiable dump, sold for $152,900 (vs. the $235,000 I paid for mine, which at one point was laughably valued at $375,000 and is now more realistically worth about $290,000). The bottom feeder who grabbed it sold it for $175,000. The speculator who paid that came in and cleaned out the mess, replastered the pool, installed a watering system, cleaned up the landscaping, had the house painted inside and out, put down new tile and carpeting, redid the kitchen and bathrooms, and now has it on the market for $269,900. If she gets $260,000 for it — which she will — my house’s value not only has NOT dropped below what I paid, it probably has increased in the absence of a slum property across the street.

So… a) it’s bull puckey; and b) we can’t do anything about it anyway, so we should find something we actually can help to worry about.

Like you I watch my 401k drop just to see how bad it is doing. Damn it can be depressing.

I think that price is a little low too, but I haven’t actually tried to sell the house yet. And the house is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for it.