By Warren McNeil

What’s my house worth?

If you are a home owner you might be wondering what your house is worth compared to other homes in your neighbourhood. Let’s say you lived in your house for 10 years. You might not have any idea what your home is worth if you were to sell it today.

I am not going to go into a sales pitch here. Our blog is not used for that purpose. The sole purpose of this blog is to educate, provide tips and provide general real estate information.

As a realtor, one goal is to meet new people. One way for us to do that is through free market evaluations. Everyone wants to know what their house is worth. Some want to know for information purposes while others might need one because they are thinking of selling. In either case, this information can be extremely valuable to a home owner.

So the question you may be asking yourself, what is a home market evaluation? Here is a breakdown of the steps a realtor will follow to do a market evaluation.

Step1:  Realtor gathers information about the property. Typically information such as area, house type, house style, # of beds, # of baths, age of house, upgrades, lot size. This list can go on and on.

Step 2: Realtor does a walkthrough of the house looking for things such as curb appeal, overall condition, special features such as hardwood, ceramics, en-suite, finished basement etc

Step 3: Realtor collects local market information specific to the area. Information such as recent sold, expired and actively listed properties. Also included in the analysis is average price, days on market, list to sale price percentage. If there are no other comparables then the realtor might need to look at different areas to compare to. Sometimes a house in one area might be worth less then houses in other areas.

Step 4: Realtor goes through these statistics and comes up with a price range that house could be worth.

Sometimes the price a realtor suggests might be lower or higher then what the homeowner had in mind. I never hear people complain when we say their house is worth more. Some people think their house is worth more but find out after the evaluation that the market is telling them otherwise. This can be frustrating but we always remind them that buyers ultimately set the price. Buyers will only pay what they want to pay for a house.

In summary, whether you are thinking of selling or just need to find out what you house is worth, consider consulting a realtor and ask them to do a free market evaluation.

Thanks for reading!

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