Aside from Zillow.com,what is the best method for finding the true market value of a property? Thank you for your replies.
Zillow is unreliable. Ask your friendly real estate agent for comps.
Although it’s not actually comps, you can check realtor.com to see what various properties are listed at to compare.
Get out and network with your realtors. Visit open houses in the area to see what the asking price is. Look to see what asking prices in the classifieds are. This won’t give you an exact answer but will give you a ballpark idea.
Getting your real estate agent to help is the best way but I still recommend getting out into the neighborhoods you want to work and see what the asking prices are.
The true market value of a house is what houses just like your subject house have sold for in the last few months. It is not what they listed for it is not what you want it to sell for it is what they actually sold for. You need to factor in the days on the market also to see how long you are lookiing to hold a house listed for that price.
Yes true comps are the ones that have been sold but if you want a quick ball park idea then looking to see what the asking price of homes that are for sell in the same area will give you one.
You should be able to know what your subject home will ballpark sell for when you first look at it without knowing any true comps if you know your area.
The next best thing is to know a realtor or appraiser who can give you a better idea of what the subject home is worth. And finally an appraisal is your most secure way of knowing what the home is worth.
Hard to use that as a gauge seeing that many of the listings may have been sitting for 6-8 months due to being overpriced. You also may see some that are way underpriced and will be gone from the market in 2 days. Checking the comps to see what the prices of homes that actually sold and how fast they sold is the only way to get good numbers. Checking listing prices may put you off 10-20% from reality, especially in a bearish market since most realtors and sellers are still not lowering their prices to where they will sell. Being off by that much (or more) can SERIOUSLY give your profit a buzzkill when you go to sell, maybe even create a loss. As unrealistic as Flip That House (TV show) is I’ve seen even on there where recent flips has resulted in drastic profit loss or even in one case a $15k total loss due to shifting and stagnating market. You have to know exactly where you will be when its time to sell, Realtor.com is not going to tell you that. I won’t even get into the fact that 30% of what’s on there is STALE data and most of the time when you follow up on a listing from there its long gone so even worse than using listing prices over sold prices is the fact that the data is as stale as 6 month old bread.
After I have inspected a property and determined the repair costs and time.
Before making an offer I get my agent to find Sales Comparisons…
We look for similar properties, within a 5-mile radius and sold within the past 6-months.
I also look at the current property listings to get an idea of similar asking prices using the same demographics.