An Appraiser's View

Home prices are cooling, does this mean values are declining? No, it does not. Home price cooling can mean many things, the list price vs. sell price to be dropping, the percentage increase in values to be slowing, the median home price is lower than it was, or, in some cases, homes selling for less than comparable homes sold for recently (a.k.a. "declining values"). Typically when you hear in the media that home prices are cooling only one or two of the above circumstances are happening in your specific market, verses when market values are actually declining all four are present. 

The issue with broad statements of increasing, declining, or stable values is they are not specific to individual properties. The data the media, home owners, government agencies, etc. presented is based on National, State, county, and city wide market data and may vary significantly from what individual neighborhoods are experiencing. And even within neighborhoods fixer homes, move up homes, move down homes, etc. can experience significant differences in percentage of increase or decline.  Even when all housing markets are headed in the same direction, the percentage of increase or decrease differences between individual markets can be as much as 50%!      

Given the lack of information on all of these indicators specific to your market, how can you find out if your homes value is going up or down? The answer depends on the reason for the question.
If you need to know because you are considering selling, interview 2-3 experienced real estate agents. They are your best resource for the direction of market price. If you have a unique property, find an agent who deals in those properties. If you do end up selling, they provide the most likely route to top dollar for your property.
If you are planning on selling the property yourself, considering buying a property to flip, or considering building on vacant land to sell, hire an experienced real estate appraiser, one that has experience in the type of property you are needing the data on. You might even ask for a prospective opinion of value, but make sure you fully understand what it is based on before doing so. 
And if you want to know before taking out a loan against your home for some home improvement projects, why? You can either afford to make the payments or not, what your home is worth only matters for your LTV, and that will determined by the appraiser the bank hires, not your loan officer, a real estate agent, or even another appraiser you hired. For more on my opinion of home values for reasons other than buying or selling, subscribe to my blog.