With the local real estate market uncertain and little free time, the couple are not eager to go through the work of selling their home and shopping for a new one. So Russell is using technology to test the market for him: He’s used a service by real estate web site Zillow.com to drum up interest in their home without officially putting it up for sale.

Zillow is typical of a new generation of real estate web sites that offer gee-whiz visual appeal and much more information than just property listings and cool maps. With customers demanding more accurate information and competition heating up among sites sporting more sophisticated and powerful technology, today’s real estate Web services are trying to do more of the heavy lifting around marketing and selling a property. “Things have changed a lot,” said Celia Chen, director of housing economics at Moody’s Economy.com. “Ten years ago you couldn’t go in and stick in a zip code to find out how many houses are for sale.” In addition to one-year-old Zillow, other sites include: Cyberhomes.com, a research and appraisal tool; Trulia.com, a real estate search engine; and Redfin.com and My-Currency.com, Web portals for buying and selling homes in select US markets . Zillow has generated the biggest buzz. Its “Zestimate” service, which uses proprietary algorithms to calculate an individual property’s valuation, was a hit on the cocktail circuit, as neighbors and acquaintances could gossip about house values.

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