Oct. 31, 2012
Do you know what your home is worth? If you’re like most homeowners, you have an idea, but you need accurate market data to arrive at a listing price. Otherwise you risk giving away your house or watching it sit on the market for months.
Sites like Zillow, Homes.com, and Trulia provide values for homes, but I caution you against relying on their information.
Why? Because I looked up the value of my house on two of those sites, and the results were $106,000 apart.
Then I checked the sites’ market analysis, figuring I might at least learn if the value of my home was going up or down. One site said my house had increased in value by $45,000 in the past six months; the other said it decreased by $40,000 during the same period.
Another site offered data from the central appraisal district as a value – when was the last time you saw a home listed with a price that matched its tax appraisal?
If you want to know what price the market will bear for your home, I encourage you to talk to a Texas REALTOR®. They have access to the prices people have actually paid for houses in your neighborhood. They can use that data to put together comparative market analysis that will tell you what your home is worth.
