What’s my home worth? The answer is the foundation for intelligent decision making. No matter what type of evaluation is done, the result is a matter of opinion. There are three basic types of home valuations:
- Completely automated reports like those from Zillow (Zestimate), Trulia or our Market Snapshot, which is a Realtor.com product. These reports have no human interaction and may be online or emailed to you on a periodic basis. This is the instant gratification method.
- The Realtor generated Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). These reports can be very broad or drill down to very specific criteria. This the report that we create to advise clients regarding pricing the property that they are buying or selling. This is the free report that we are offering here and can take anywhere from five minutes of hands-on time to over an hour. The final valuation may be manually calculated and adjusted or formula based. View a Sample CMA and sign up for yours:
- The appraisal: this report is done by a licensed appraiser most commonly for the bank’s benefit (if you were paying cash, an appraisal would be optional). The fee for an appraisal starts around $350 and can climb into the thousands depending on what is being appraised. $450 is a good budgeting number for a single family, owner occupied appraisal. Appraisals for investment property cost more as rent rates and income potential are examined. A full appraisal is often used for valuation purposes on estates, refinancing and purchases.
