Set the price

A - Home Pricing Help: What web sites offer pricing help?

It's hard to be objective about your own home’s value. Owners come to accept–and dismiss–the minor and sometimes major drawbacks in their own homes.

Improve your objectivity by visiting open houses that are in the price range you’re contemplating. Develop the habit of looking at other homes in a true, objective sense–just like buyers will when they’ll be touring your home.

        Sources for homes active on the market:

There are over 900 MLSs (Multiple Listing Services) in the US. Local MLSs often allow the public to view homes for sale via the internet. Some of them stopped this because the big realty companies in these MLSs demanded that each agency provide this service.

This way they can provide their own web site and promote this as a wonderful service they provide for buyers. But many of these agencies refuse to display the homes listed by their competitors who offer a discount. 

Smaller discounters can't afford to have their own web sites. The seller ends up being the looser as these discounters get less exposure to the public and many are forced to go out of business.

The best source 

The best place to see all the homes in your area is on realtor.com. Just enter the zip code or area and you'll get the option of housing type and your price range. This site actually provides more info than the local agency sites.

Sources for homes that have sold:

Local newspapers list real estate closings and sold prices.

County deeds offices record all sales and many are internet accessible.

Searchsystems  Low cost access to many public databases  US and Canada

Records.com Has sale prices but could be  months behind in updatinged.

MelissaData Sales activity and price trends for an individual zip code.

City-data Displays volume of homes sold, average selling price by town and great info by zip code  

                                NOTE:

Anytime you see pricing information for homes currently on the market, remember, it's the asking price  that is shown. However, it's the selling price, not the asking price that is most important in determining the probable selling price of your home.

        Internet appraisal sources:

          Automated appraisals are available

Several companies provide a free or low cost estimate of your home’s value using automated evaluation techniques. They rely on calculations and estimates and attempt to match some combination of criteria about your home against similar homes that have recently sold in your area: number of rooms, bedrooms, baths, square footage, tax assessment, etc.

They provide a questionable estimate of worth. They don’t consider factors such as views, lot location, updating, condition, curb appeal, etc. that your home or the comparable properties offer. And these are the real dynamics that increase or decrease a property’s desirability and subsequent marketability.

These automated estimators have the most success with comparisons between homes in a subdivision, complex or neighborhood of similar homes. However, as these homogeneous housing developments age, the comparisons become suspect since owners make room additions, finish basements, install new kitchens and, in general, make automated estimating subject to serious inaccuracies. 

          Automation has its drawbacks

An example of automated pricing was published in the September 2006 issue of Money magazine. Four websites and an appraiser provided their estimates, domania.com, housevalues.com, and realestateabc.com. The forth site doesn't provide estimates anymore. Hhmmmm.

Two of these sites gave their estimate in a range from a low to high value that spanned approximately $50,000. The other two sites gave a single value estimate and both came in under the appraiser’s opinion, one by $73,000 and the other by a mind-boggling $166,000. If you are going to rely on an automated estimate, the moral of the story is to get estimates from several sites.

          Here are other value-estimate sites

HomePrice.net  Offer a Home Price Report for $29.99 that also provides extensive area information.

Yahoo.com Their real estate section has local, recently sold properties that tie your property to these local sales.