Even if you are not thinking of selling your home you may be wondering how much you can sell it for. You may have your own idea of what your house is worth to you and of course if you wouldn’t sell it for a penny less then that is what it is worth. But what if you really wanted to sell it, what should your list price be?
The most important factor is your home’s worth, or list price, is the market value. This is what all-similar homes in the area are going to approximately cost no matter how much you’ve spent updating and improving your home.
In order to figure out your homes worth you first need to find similar properties for sale in your neighborhood. Ideally you would want the sales prices to be within the last six to twelve months. If needed ask a real estate agent, who can run those numbers for you.
For each of the similar properties (you should have at least three or four) write down what the features of the homes are. For each feature you don’t have in yours, subtract the estimated value for that feature from the sales price. For example, if one of the properties has an extra bedroom you would want to subtract at least $20,000 from the price. Similarly, you would also want to add the price of any features that your home has, that the property doesn’t. Once you have done this with each property you take the configured prices and average them together. This is the market value of your home.
This is what appraisers do to figure out the value of your home. They will also take into account house appreciation and any other factors that may have caused a house to sell under or over the perceived market value.
That’s why sometimes it may be easier to have an appraiser come in and figure out your home worth. They can give you an accurate home worth that will not only give you an appropriate sales price but will also give you something to show the potential buyers.
Online services are not always the most accurate. They may be able to give you some idea but they usually do not have the most recent and detailed information.
Finally, the other option is to contact a local real estate agent. They will often, in hopes of getting your business, perform a market analysis in order to figure out the market value of your home. They will often perform better then the appraisers because they are more familiar with the area and have more experience dealing with the details an appraiser may not think of.