How can I find out how much a property is worth?
Posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 12:59 am.There are several ways to find out how much a property is worth.
The "in-depth" way to do it is to do an analisys of comparable sales. We have a special, proprietary spreadsheet model that allows us to evaluate the last 100+ sales in an area based on the price per square foot (PSF), tax assessment ratio, and other factors. Here's a screenshot:
A quick way is to look for recent sales in the neighborhood. The Washington Post has a great site for this, available here.
Many of our customers ask how good sites like Zillow.com are. Our answer is, "they're good, some of the time." Our experience (and backed up by a recent WSJ article) is that the estimates can be very accurate, or off by more than 25%, and it's hard to tell when they're wrong. We think Zillow is great to get the feel of a neighborhood, but very dangerous to use when deciding how much to offer or sell for on any one specific property.
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August 20th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Zillow is a disaster in our area. It relies on very old and inaccurate property data and can be off as much as 100k! An MLS report showing the homes that went pending quickly within the immediate vicinity, and with like characteristics, best represent an ideal opening price. I wish there were an easier way!
August 20th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Daniel,
Are you offering that software for sale? Is it off the shelf down at the Realtor store?
Pat