2020 has been a very bad year. Let’s just accept it. The year may have been a huge flunk with many things going wrong but there is always a silver lining in a gray cloud.
The real estate prices for the year have gone considerably up this year. This might be a great opportunity for all of us who are interested in selling our houses to grab this chance and sell the house at a higher rate.
How Much is My House Worth?
Your house is worth a lot obviously. You need to see two kinds of value when you are seeing the house’s worth.
Fair Market Value – This means that how your house looks to the buyers compared to the other houses in your neighborhood. They will look at the comparison of the houses in an area.
If you are looking for a real estate agent to find the worth of your house then they will do the same thing to put a price on your house which is realistic.
Appraised Value – An appraised value is not the same as the fair market value. The professional appraiser will consider the location, size, and condition of your home, and any renovations you’ve completed.
An appraised value will be looked at by the mortgager or money lender when someone is interested in buying your house.
This however does not mean that the comparison between your house and the other neighboring houses is not done when your property is appraised. Just avoid that confusion.
5 Ways to Find Out What Your House is Worth
There are 5 ways in which you can find out the worth or value of your house. We have listed them all below. It would be great if you could go through all of them and not just skip.
1. Enter Your Address Into a Home Value Estimator
You can get an estimate for your home value online. There are different online tools that will help you with there. Some of them are –
- Zillow “Zestimate” home value estimator
- Chase home value estimator
- com MyHome home value estimator
- RE/MAX home value estimator
- Redfin home value estimator
They are usually known as automated valuation models. They are AVMs. The estimate is generated by them through use algorithms and publicly available data such as tax assessments, recent sales, and other public records.
They are however just estimate to give you a brief idea. They are not to be confused with the final idea. There are a few pros and cons while using the AVMs.
Pros – They are technological development and have come a long way now. They are used by millions of people all over the world and are said to be very useful tools.
Cons – The data available is not always correct and the algorithm can sometime be flawed or malfunctioning too. So its better to consider them an estimate and not just the final price on your house.
2 Ask a Real Estate Agent For a Free Comparative Market Analysis
You can ask a real estate agent for a free comparative market analysis of your house. Yes its possible and no we are not joking. This happens a lot actually.
The real estate agent will want to get your business when you finally decide to sell the house so they might offer a free comparative market analysis for you.
They will compare all the properties around your house and check the value for which they are sold and then give them to you.
Pros – It is good to have a professional do this for you.
Cons – Real estate agents can use different comps and then they can actually conflict over the price of the house. The data can come out inaccurate if there has been no sale around your house.
3. Check Your County or Municipal Auditor’s Website
County auditors often assess the value of residential properties to their own purpose of property tax. You can search this info online.
You can look up the value of your house online. As crazy as it sounds there might be a shot that they have estimated the value of your house.
Pros – The data is easily available at your fingertips. This is another comparison for the price of the house.
Cons – This is usually for the taxable value of your home. This might not consider some of the market factors that can affect the selling price of your house.
Sometimes assessed values are far off from market values so this can be an unreliable source of info.
4. Identify Trends With the FHFA House Price Index Calculator
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s House Price Index (HPI) calculator is yet another tool for estimating home value. It analyses historic mortgage data.
It can search and project what homes in your estate or area are to be based on the spectrum of worthy to be bought.
Pros – The calculator can draw data from millions of sales.
Cons – It will not estimate the market value of a particular house. It looks at the market as a whole.
5. Hire a Professional Appraiser
The last but not the least method is to hire a professional appraiser. This is probably the easiest way to do things. The professional can put a price on your house after its inspection.
You can find a lot of professional appraisers online. If you want then you can get yourself a good one. This won’t be free though.
Pros – They are professionals so they will put the correct amount on your house.
Cons – This will not be for free and you will have to pay quite an amount to the professional appraiser.
Conclusion
We hope that this article here has been useful for you. We tried our best to explain everything to you in simple words. Hopefully, we have been successful in doing that even if a little bit.