Pricing your home correctly is the #1, must be done first, priority item in the path of selling your home. If your home is not priced at true market value, you lose. You lose money, you lose excess time on the market, and you may also lose the opportunity to sell your home. 1. Appraiser Hire a Real Estate Appraiser, you can find a local professional from the website of The Appraisal Institute. It is an international membership association of professional real estate appraisers, with more than 18,000 members and 99 chapters throughout the United States, Canada and abroad. Its mission is to support and advance its members as the choice for real estate solutions and uphold professional credentials, standards of professional practice and ethics consistent with the public good. 2. Bank of America Has an online service available for FREE on their webpage. Check it out easy to use enter your address and zip code press enter and there are the numbers. http://realestatecenter.bankofamerica.com/RePortal/Homepage.aspx 3. Real Estate Agents Only the cutting edge internet savvy Realtors have an on line FREE Over-The-Net home evaluation service. Some try to send you off to pay services, if your going to pay anyone it should be an Appraiser. 4. Legal Business Newspaper Every city and county has a Legal Business Newspaper that it uses for all public legal announcements. They also publish foreclosures, divorces, Judgments and Property Transfers. Larger papers have on-line services and keep archives. 5. Tax Records City and County Tax records show all property ownership and transfers. They show when a property was sold and for how much. It also shows the recent appraisal information used to compute the tax. Online some have been updated to show photos of the property. 6. Multiple Listing Service You can directly access the MLS to see at what prices homes are listed. This does not give you true market value but gives you a reference to where it may be going, up, flat, down. 7. Realtor.com the premier real estate web site more people by far use Realtor.com to get information on residential real estate. It has the same information as the MLS but usually has more photos and is usually easier to navigate. I have left off the most obvious which is to have a real estate agent come out and prepare a CMA (comparable market analysis), dont believe that all real estate agents are equal. Do this only if you are not sure if you will actually try to sell on your own. Its kind of slimy to have someone do work for you, with you knowing your not going to work with them. |
