My house is worth what?

Okay, so you know I love houses. Because of this, I watch a lot of HGTV. One of my new favorite shows to watch is called "My House is Worth What?". They go around to people's houses across the country and tell them what the house would sell for in it's current state. Some people want to know so they can sell. Some people want to know to see if they have equity to do a renovation or something along those lines. It's fun. Unfortunately they do not do the show in the Houston area. :0(

So I found this website, housevalues.com, where you put in general information and they send you a value. Well, I got my value back today. It's from a local realtor who looked at comparables in the area and gave me a range for what the value might be. But he said I could make an appointment with him to come out and take a look at the house to give a more exact estimate and also talk about things we could do to up the value. All for no cost! Which is exactly what I want. I want to know if what we've done to the house so far have been good investments and what we should still do to get the best return. We haven't completed enough projects yet to warrant the guy actually coming to the house, but I think I might email him to ask some questions about it. See what his thoughts are maybe about the market and when he thinks prices will start rising again. Based on his estimate, if we sell at the high end of the range he gave, we'd only make about $4000. If we sell at the low end, we'll lose about $8000. So, how long should we wait until we have better odds?

In my opinion, I think things will start to turn around in the first half of this year. Not that I have a whole lot of evidence to back that up, but I just think it will. At least around here in our area. We were fortunate enough to not get hit as bad with the housing slump, though sales are down and prices have dropped, but not nearly as far as other places. I think our best scenario would be to sell our house after prices start rising again, but buy a new house while they're still low enough to get a good value. When that will be...only the market will tell...