How much is your house worth?

When selling your home, you may ask yourself, How much is my house worth? The most important first step you can make in selling a house is calculating an accurate fair market value.

Price your home too low and you may lose thousands. Price your home too high and you may price yourself out of the market and never sell your home.

If your house is for sale for a long time (buyers and agents can find out how long your home has been for sale), a potential buyer will think you might be getting desperate, so they will make low (and often insulting) offers.

Home Value Tools & Resources:

There are several ways to determine your home’s value using the Internetsome are Free and some are a minimal cost. Home values calculations are determined using sold prices, public records of assessed value, and other real estate information.

Chase.com — FREE Home Estimate

Use the Home Value Estimator at Chase.com to get a free estimated market value of your home or the home you are interested in. You’ll also see recent sales of nearby homes that were used to calculate the value of the home.

Homes.com — FREE Home Estimate

Homes.com is a great resource to estimate the value of your home. View listing information about other homes for sale on your street. It also provides demographic information such as Population Growth, Education, Crime Rate, Schools, Job Growth, Unemployment Rate and Median Household Incomes.

Zillow.com — FREE Home Zestimate

FREE — Zillow.com has a powerful online tool which instantly calculates a zestimate value of your home based on your square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, homes sold recently in your neighborhood and more. This amount changes daily as info is updated into their database.

ACCURACY: Zillow claims to be within 10% accuracy of the value of the home. We find that because of the mass amount of data going into Zillow’s calculations everyday, the zestimate of your home can vary by tens of thousands or more each and everyday. (For example, a house we looked at was $430,000 one day and only $360,000 on another day.)

CONCLUSION: Zillow never claims that one should use the zestimate tool as a replacement for an appraisal. Zillow encourages you to use the calculation as a good starting point in researching the value of your home.

Conduct your own research of Neighborhood Houses — FREE

• Collect real estate flyer’s of neighborhood homes to compare to yours (FSBO’s and Real Estate Agent’s) .
• Pick up local real estate books and newspapers to find properties for sale in your neighborhood
• Attend any Open House events of homes in your neighborhood
• Compare your home to other properties based on the following:

• Type (Don’t compare your Home for sale to a Condo)
• Neighborhood (Compare homes only in your neighborhood and school district)
• Size (Chose homes similar in size to your home)
• Amenities & Views (These can vastly increase or decrease the value or salability of a home: Private pool, tennis courts, walking trails, lake views, mountain views, privacy, street traffic, convenience, subdivision, curb appeal of surrounding homes)
• Number of Bedrooms, Bathrooms
• Garage — none, 1 car, 2 car or more, street parking, ease of pulling out into the street
• Age of Home
• Style of Home (Some homes can be harder to sell because they are very dated)
• Lot size, Landscaping and upkeep
• School District can be an important selling point!