Your home is most likely your biggest asset and it’s important to know what it’s worth! If you’re gathering information to prepare your home for the market, I’d love to assist you every step of the way.
Ways to Find Out Property Values
Me: I thoroughly enjoy databases, excel spreadsheets, and crunching numbers. I’d love to create a customized Comparable Market Analysis for your home evaluating recent market activity and specific information (number of bedrooms/bathrooms, square footage, location, condition, and unique features) that will impact your home’s value. I’m good at it and I don’t cost a dime. More often than not, the number I share with clients interested in the listing is the number on the appraisal at the end of the closing period.
Appraisal: An appraisal is a written property value estimate completed by a licensed appraiser and most will cost around $500, more or less depending on the size of your home. An appraiser uses an approach that combines comparable market activity, a replacement or reproduction cost estimate, and if applicable, an income capitalization approach.
House Value Site AVM (Automated Valuation Model):
Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, Trulia, etc. use computer-generated algorithms combining public records and historic sales data to calculate your home’s potential value. While super interesting and cool that they pool all of that data together, the end result is wildly inaccurate. These algorithms pull foreclosures, family sales for $1, and other data points that skew the number. You don’t want to base your decision to sell your biggest asset on an algorithm that averages a $300,000 sale with $50,000 foreclosure.
If a website prompts you to enter your address to give you an estimate, please know they are then selling your data. Full disclosure, I’m going to contact you if you ask me for a customized Comparable Market Analysis but I’m not selling your data. If you enter your data on my website, I’m using it to contact you so I can help you, not selling it to a stranger. Also full disclosure, I’m very uncomfortable with how slick most real estate websites are at tricking people into giving them their data so they can turn around and sell it.
How would I recommend using these websites? Get what you can without entering any of your personal data- that includes not registering. Typically, they ask you to register with your email address and prompt you for your phone number. If they offer an option like signing in using Google or your Facebook account, guess what? Those companies then share your data. They’re tracking your activity and clicks on the website but until they have your email and phone number, they can’t sell your contact information. The best way to use these websites is to track recent sales of similar homes in your area. That can give you a rough idea of your home value. Or, you can Connect With Me for an honest conversation about your goals and how I can help. I’ll run the numbers and visit your home and give you real numbers.