Well, the only caveat is that the system doesn’t take into account of the interior, so it’s only a rough estimation.  But it does give a valuation all the houses in the neighborhood.

www.zillow.com

This is a website started by former Microsoft employees who were curious to see how much Bill Gates’ house and Paul Allen’s house are worth.  I believe their system is based on comps as well as statistics based models.

I did a few searches of properties in my area and the results were pretty close (within 10%) to what market rates are in the area.  It’s a good tool just to quickly get a rough estimate of a property.  Give it a shot!

We know the bubble is coming; some might say it’s already here, but most likely we have only seen the calm before the storm. 
How will the market recover?  How fast will it recover?  Supply and demand says that the glut of supply, resulting from foreclosures, new condo conversions (yes they are still converting, I know of a few that my realtor emailed me about) and new houses, must be absorbed at lower prices before going up again. 
Where will the demand come from?  You can argue baby boomers retiring to Florida, but more and more, the media has been promoting cities like Austin Texas for its affordability as well as leisure activities such as going back to school for adults!!
One x-factor I believe will actually come from South American nations like Brazil.  Brazil just recently repaid their entire debt to the IMF, International Monetary Fund, and their financial system is starting to mature.  With the help of Wall Street investment bankers, foreign capital is pouring in with the expectancy of a boom in Equity Market like India, another maturing economy.  The wealth generated there could induce REI opportunities offered by foreclosures in S. Florida.
I don’t foresee this happening over the next year or two.  But if you are in for a long haul, when foreign capitals start flowing in, it could well be a sign of the start of the recovery.
 

This below is a report from www.realtytrac.com 

“Irvine, Calif. – January 23, 2006 – RealtyTracâ„¢ the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2005 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which showed that 846,982 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure in 2005, and a 25 percent increase in the number of new foreclosures from the first quarter to the fourth quarter.”

“RealtyTrac publishes the largest national database of pre-foreclosure and foreclosure properties, with more than 550,000 properties in nearly 2,000 counties across the country, and is the foreclosure data provider to MSN House & Home, Yahoo! Real Estate, AOL Real Estate and HomeGain.com.”

“Overall U.S. foreclosure numbers climbed steadily over the course of the year, with more new foreclosures reported in every quarter,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “This trend appears to be moving the real estate foreclosure market back to its historic levels.”

“Saccacio noted that the number of 2005 foreclosures needed to be kept in context. “Even with almost 850,000 properties entering some stage of foreclosure across the country over the course of the year, this represents less than 1 percent of all U.S. households. And the increase in U.S. foreclosures from Q3 to Q4 was just below 5 percent.””

This part about Florida is what I think will drive up supply of housing even more.

‘Despite a 29 percent decrease in new foreclosures from the first quarter to the fourth quarter, Florida documented the nation’s highest foreclosure rate and accounted for more than 14 percent of the nation’s new foreclosures in 2005. The state reported 121,843 properties entering some stage of foreclosure — 1.67 percent of the state’s households.”

Toll Brothers also came out with a report of lowered expected number of new homes sold for 2006 on Bloomberg today.

“Toll lowered its forecast of the number of homes it will sell in fiscal 2006 to 9,500 to 10,200, from the 10,200 to 10,600 it projected on Aug. 25. In fiscal 2005, which ended Oct. 31, Toll sold 8,769 homes. ” 

In the same report, a real estate analyst expected the increasing supply of housing in Miami area to cause a steady decline in housing prices.  He expected that it will take the market 2 years to absorbed the increase in the housing supply.

Basically that means if I buy now, I am in for the long haul.  Time to rethink this some more.