How To Find Out How Much Your House Is Worth Online In 2021! What Methods Work & What Methods Don't
0https://181CloseNow.com/ caught up with Senior Closing Options Analyst Corey Chappell in Oklahoma City to find out how you can find out how much your house is worth online. What methods work and what methods don't work.
Most people want a magic tool that let's them enter their address and see how much their house is worth. Unfortunately services like Zillow, Trulia and Redfin just flat out do not work. In fact the Zillow Development Team personally told us no one should ever use their site as a valuation tool.
So why is finding your houses value so hard?
Real estate is not a liquid asset. There is no liquid market of buyers with cash on hand ready to buy at any second and houses are not uniform. Houses come in all different shapes, sizes and conditions. Not to mention the process of selling a house takes weeks at the absolute fastest.
Because there houses are not liquid assets there really is no "market value" a house is worth whatever you can sell it for. But if we want to get a pretty good idea of the kind of values we can expect we can start by finding public records which are usually available through your local county assessors office.
We will want to use the county assessor to find out which houses have sold in our neighborhood in the past 12 months. Hopefully we have a fair amount of data to work with because we want to stay in our neighborhood if possible.
Now we look at sales over the past 12 months. We want to see houses that sold in the same price range. Also keep an eye out for sales that were much higher or much lower than expected. These are outliers and will need to be put to the side.
Once we can see a clear range we can create an average sales price. Simply add all the sales together and then divide by the number of sales.
We should now be able to find the value of our house. If you just completed a total professional redo of the home and it's market ready and needs nothing the value is likely going to be the high end of the range.
If the house needs a few MINOR updates like paint and carpet it's value should be at the lower end of the range.
If the house is between the two then we can usually consider the average a likely value for the house.
We also want to take the time to look at those outliers. Often it will be fairly obvious why these special transactions happened.
Houses needing major repairs: new roof, plumbing, foundation issues, bathroom remodel etc. should not be considered part of the range we found. These houses need massive repairs which would take a lot of time and money. These homes should be the outliers we see. Homes in this condition should be going for 20-30% of the price homes at the top of the range command.
When going through sales remember sometimes people do stupid things. There are people who have more money than sense. Some people will spend a fortune on a worthless property convinced they are going to be the next big time reality star. Some people buy a house having no clue what they are doing. Do not be surprised if you come across this and remember it is probably not a sale you should include in your averaging.
Why is it important to find the value of your home the right way? Most home buyers have to borrow the money to buy the home from a bank or mortgage company. The lenders are looking at the same information and doing the same analysis. They want to be sure the house will be good collateral for the loan and will be able to demand a satisfactory amount if it has to be sold.
A bank is not going to lend many times more than houses in the area can demand. They are looking at the sales range, average sales price and the condition of your house in the same way you should be.
Knowing how to properly find the value of your house also helps you have realistic expectations. Since you know what houses are going for, and the condition those houses are in, you also have a good idea what a bank will be willing to lend. This means you are going to have a better idea of expected sales price simply because you have a way to calculate the value of your home.
This will make it easier to sell your house and may even help you sell your house faster than would normally be possible. Pricing a house correctly from the start can make a BIG difference.
Being well informed is always a good thing. Knowing how to find the value of your house online is a great first step in becoming a more informed homeowner.
While there are companies like https://181closenow.com/ that buy houses as-is and pay cash it's not enough to make real estate a liquid market. That means your house will never have a set value.
As the market changes and the condition of your house changes so will the value. There is no magic tool to help you find the value of your house online. Zillow, Trulia and Redfin are good resources but they can not value your house accurately.
To get a real idea of what your house is worth you need to look at the sales range and average sales price.