Bank of America

www.bankamerica.com

Research the value of homes in a target neighborhood
or simply snoop on your neighbors for $9.95

Bank of America (San Francisco, CA; $264 billion; 10.9 million ATM cards) relaunched HomeWorth Search in March. The service, which costs $9.95 per search, allows users to type in any address in the 28-state area, and receive an instant online report of public record information on nearby properties including owner’s name, property address, most recent sales price, sales date, square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, and first mortgage amount.

This feature allows users to conduct a quick analysis of a home’s value relative to others that have recently sold (“comparables”) within one-half mile. BofA tested the program a year ago, but it disappeared with no explanation shortly after we reported on it. It worked fine for our neighborhood a year ago (when it was free), but this time we couldn’t get the program to recognize any of the addresses in our Seattle neighborhood. Curiously, when went directly to HomeWorth’s content provider, Axicom’s DataQuick division products.dataquick.com/consumer, it worked fine. Test it yourself at www.bankamerica.com/p-finance/athome/hmworth_ov.html

DataQuick offers free price trend reports. After registering, users enter their zip code and a two-year average-price report is instantly produced at products.dataquick.com/freezip/checkemail.asp.

If you don’t want to deal with the privacy issues raised by delivering homeownership records to anyone with a valid credit card number, you might still look at some of the other services provided by DataQuick. These can be licensed on a private-branded basis for your Web site, or you can simply link users to the DataQuick Web.

Source: company, 5/22/98