DETERMINING THE VALUE OF YOUR HOME

If your home is just about anywhere other than Texas, you can get good recent property sales information for comparable homes in your area for free. The best website to get this free information is http://www.homeradar.com/. If you live in Texas, this and any other property valuation website will give you very unreliable information, and sometimes won't work at all. That's because Texas is a "Nondisclosure" state, which means that what a house sold for is not public information. That makes it impossible for any online services to get reliable sales data.

To Get a Professional Opinion, You Have 3 Choices:

Hire a professional appraiser
A licensed appraiser is probably the best way to get a reliable unbiased opinion. The cost can vary, but a standard appraisal like the kind the lenders get is usually $300-$350. You can get an appraiser to do it less if you don't want a written report. Considering the importance of the pricing decision and the impact of a potentially wrong decision, it's not a bad investment. It's common for FSBOs (For-Sale-By-Owner) to make pricing errors. Price your home too low, and it will probably cost you a lot more than an appraisal. Price it too high, and you'll probably waste more money on advertising than the cost of the appraisal, because no amount of advertising will sell an overpriced home.

Call some Realtors for CMAs
You can call a number of real estate agents, who will all eagerly do a CMA (Comparable Market Analysis) for free, in the hope that you will list your home with them. The problem is that agents often have their own agendas. One will under-price your home in the hope of a quick and easy commission. Another will overprice it to tell you what you want to hear just to get the listing - fully expecting you will lower the price later. The other problem is that you have to deal with these agents and spend a lot of time listening to their sales pitches (not always fun).

Have us do a CMA for you
We will do a CMA using tax data, comparable sales information from the same sources that appraisers do, and ask you a series of questions over the phone about your house. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not actually necessary to see the house to get a reliable estimate of value. Agents will tell you it's essential because it's a good excuse to get in your house and give you a sales pitch in person. We won't charge you, and we won't give you a sales pitch.

Other Things You Can Do:

Check the houses in your neighborhood.
These are your competition, and potential buyers for your house will probably be looking at those, too. Check out the houses with the "For Sale" signs in your neighborhood, and drive around your neighborhood on weekends to see if there are any "open houses".

You can also find out a lot from the website that has all the MLS listings, Realtor.com. Over 90% of all houses for sale nationwide are on Realtor.com. Enter your zip code and a price range, and you're bound to come up with some comparable homes for sale in your area.

If there are new homes being built in your neighborhood, check what those new homes are selling for and what incentives the builders are offering. You can count on the fact that you will not sell your home for more than what a comparable new one is going for in your area. In fact, you need to be at least 5% under their prices. Buyers tend to lean towards buying new houses because they can pick the options they want, and builders always provide a good warranty and some sort of incentives that buyers find hard to resist. Even if you are priced 5% under the builder, don't be surprised if one of your buyers is lost to a builder who matched your price to clinch the deal.

Do a "price per square foot" comparison
Price per square foot is the most common method real estate professionals use to value a home. Try to find out what the price per square foot is of the other homes for sale in your area, as well as those that sold recently. Compare the square foot prices of the other homes with yours and do a little adjusting for condition, and you should have a pretty good idea.

Avoid non-relevant factors
A common mistake is for sellers to base pricing decisions on what they want or need, instead of what the market will bear. Buyers don't care how much you paid, or what it cost you to finish out the attic, or how much of a down payment you need for your new home. All they care about is how your house compares with others they can buy, and what's the best deal.

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