Fair Market Value is a guess?

What is the market value of your home? And 'what your home will sell with a reasonable marketing efforts, in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, this definition is probably not sufficient. What you really want to know is how to estimate the value of the first time.

You do not want to guess right. Even a "guess" to look around at what others are asking can be substantially off. The result would be to sell your house too cheap or too much to ask. This may seem a minor issue, but the price is too high can lead to serious consequences. I once helped a man sell his house after it sat unsold for two years. He had too high a price, and the cost to keep it, heating it (was empty) and fixing the damage will cost him tens of thousands of dollars.

Do not want to watch what others are asking anyway, why not tell you what they are actually selling for. This is especially important now that prices are declining in many parts of the country. Perhaps you sold the houses near their asking price a couple of years ago but are now regularly sell for 10% less than the asking price.

Again, this is an important point, because you do not wish to price your home too high. Overpricing has even worse consequences in the course of a general decline in home values. Imagine what happens if the values ​​are declining, while the house is too expensive for one year. By the time you realize your mistake, you may need to sell for $ 10,000 less than they could have had a year earlier.

Determination of fair market value

For starters, forget the word "proud" of everything. Fair can mean different things to different people, but has no real meaning in the real estate appraisal. You can call right or wrong, but buyers will pay what they will pay, and what determines what you can sell your home.

This is called "market value", but you can forget the "market" as well, if you will, because what other value might mean something? An "imaginary value?" A "time-if-they-better-value?" A "what-is-worth-to-value me?" If you can get buyers to pay according to this type of value, rather than what applies to them, you become the best salesman in the world.

So, how do you know what your home is worth? Look at other houses people are buying. In particular, we look at your nearby houses (within half a mile, but the more the better) that have sold recently (within the last six months), and are similar to yours (as possible). Many of these sales are "comparable" will give you an idea of ​​what your home should sell.

Of course, probably will not find homes that recently sold in your area who are exactly like yours. This means you have to adapt their selling prices in what would have been if they were like yours. For example, you add $ 20 000 for the price of a comparable sale that does not have a garage if you have one (assuming that's the market value of a garage). Subtract $ 5,000 for the lot of a large home if your needs do not have one as well.

Essentially you are adjusting the sales prices of these to see what other homes sold were sold for if they were like yours. It's not as complicated as it sounds, but not as accurate as we'd like either. If you do not want to learn to do it, you can always get a realtor to do it for you.

Just remember that market value may or may not seem fair to you. Moreover, the estimate of it may or may not be adjacent to the selling price true. It would be nice to be safer than these things, but in the end, the most we can hope for is a "best guess" .......