Second, a typical CMA is going to be 10 pages long or more. Not only will you see details of each comparable sale, but you will see the adjustments made to each one to determine the value of your home.
Last, Realtors have invaluable experience with buyers, and we can predict how buyers will value or devalue the features in your home. The best ways to value your home are an appraisal or a CMA. There are some cases where an appraisal is absolutely required such as for a mortgage.
But in cases where a CMA is permitted such as determining the price for a new real estate listing a CMA has some potential advantages over an appraisal.
For homeowners, a CMA is often the first step in deciding whether or not to list their home for sale. For buyers, a CMA is part of the process when deciding how much to offer for a home or lot. Ten years ago, online tools like Zestimates were very inaccurate. Today, they can be useful, but they should still only be used as a starting point. Always let an appraiser or a real estate agent who knows the local market assist you in determining the value of your home before you buy or sell.
Simply contact us to get started. A resident of the Asheville area since , Scott has been an active real estate broker since He and his wife Lisa have also been active real estate investors since They also know how quickly homes are selling in that neighborhood and whether they are selling above the asking price. Learn about their methodology here. While Zillow is very sophisticated, they can only make an educated guess. Each home is different, and they cannot possibly know every little detail about every home in America.
So it is perfectly reasonable to expect that their estimates will be a little bit inaccurate and occasionally very inaccurate. The bottom line is that the Zestimate serves as a starting point, which can give you an idea of what a home might sell for.
Marketing is a smallish part of a real estate business. Staff payroll, rent and building maintenance, insurance, utilities, equipment, furnishings, supplies, licenses, education…the list goes on, for both the company and the agent.
No one pays for that time, nor, with some exceptions, any portion of the costs associated with that time. Realtors could bill by the hour, but no one would pay that way when they can pay nothing unless they sell, or pay nothing whether or not they buy.
Of course there are unscrupulous realtors. Just like there are unscrupulous lawyers, accountants, contractors, even journalists…or doctors. But trying to make a living providing a valuable and usually much needed service for the public does not qualify someone as unscrupulous.
Some months they earn nothing, and work just as hard. Harder even. And helping people. We think that whatever we believe is the truth. And, unfortunately, it is VERY seductive. Human nature, we call it. As Sam points out, the justification for the commission is not scalable to higher-priced properties. Because, as price goes up, the commission gets higher and it becomes free money. The amount of work is about the same. And really, what is the need for a realty office anymore?
A realtor can work for himself now. Those will be going the way of the dinosaur. The way most homes are presented for sale by realtors is pretty underwhelming too. Most of the pictures are more of the decorations and furnishings of the house, rather than what the rooms are like, and more importantly, how the rooms sit in relation to each other and the house layout.
Flyers will refer to the website, where voluminous information will be provided — dozens of pictures, floor plan, survey, list of remodeling, improvements and updates, all dated, etc. Yet this single thing is more important than 30 photographs of rooms with the sellers furnishings and decorations in it, with no idea of how the rooms flow.
A very simple thing to provide. The other thing that I want to see is a survey of the property. Those 2 things, along with supporting photographs, will tell a person whether that property and that floor plan is suited to them so much more quickly then just pictures of 2 or 3 walls of a square room. And a floor plan with dimensions is even better. Because most realtors are hide-bound and dated in their thinking, and just think that throwing up a few pictures and a bit of happy-talk about the house is the way to sell it, as it has always been, before the advent of alternatives.
The bad realtors took me to 3 or 4 houses over the course of 2 hours, and then asked which one I wanted to buy. When I said none of them, they hit the road. The good realtors worked with me until I found what I needed. In one case, it took about 3 years.
Now, that was in the 80s, before we had access to the listings. They ended up just giving me their MLS books, and I went through weeding out properties, so in effect I was doing part of their job. But she was very supportive, and worked with me until I found the perfect house.
I drove every street around the lake front of the lakes on the chain, dozens of miles. I knew virtually every house, as did she, because she lived in the area. I had no problem with her getting paid her commission.
I went there, talked to 2 realtors, got an estimate of the price this was before Zillow. Guy did the paperwork, done deal within weeks total.
About 2 weeks after that, I get a call from one of the realtors, asking when I wanted to put the house up for sale. I told him it was long sold, a done deal. There was silence, then he asked what it went for. A longer silence, and then he muttered, Wow, you really did good, and hung up. A real go-getter, that one! In 10, 20 years, the current realty business model will be akin to that of the buggy whip manufacturers.
Disturbingly, this also creates an incentive for the buyers agent to make you pay as much as you are willing to. Zillow is a joke and time-waster like Facebook! Zillow is making it hard for me to sell my property.
It is worth 4x what they are posting. I own lake front property. But their bad estimate is making it hard for me to get what I would like out of the house. Too bad there is not a way we can file a class action at Zillow for degrading our values. I bought my house less then 3 years ago, at that time Zillow valued my house close to what I paid for it. Within a year, Zillow valued my house at 17K more then what I paid. Today it is valued less then what I paid for it and less then what I still owe on it.
It makes no sense, I have made improvements, repairs, and updates on this house. The lot next to mine has an old mobile home on it and is valued close what my house is, because it has one more bedroom then my built house. I think Zillow has it way wrong. My taxes were assessed at a higher value then what Zillow listed, I fought it, and the county reduced it back down to 14k over what I paid for it, based on comparables. Very unreliable information. I am not in the market to sell it, but their information, devalues my property so much that if I was, I could not even get what I owe on it back out.
This is what I did. Paying have the going rate made a big difference to me. The work involved? Not really too much. Stage your house, take careful pics and make sure they show well, keep it clean. Yes, the time wasters coming through were a drag, but not worth thousands of dollars to me to avoid.
I absolutely agree with the way you did it. What a waste! I agree with you…. I paid 2. He was cool and all, but the whole process just highlighted how unnecessary agents are in the age of the Internet. I Sold My House. It only works in super hot markets. Given the expense of buying a home, people want hand holding.
And it was basically all scare tactics. All you need is the MLS listing access and 6 months of sales to price correctly. At first blush the second point seems wrong. Zillow and Trulia are total scam! The home prices are so low, invites all the criminals to buy homes in good neighborhood and create one big ghetto city.
The good homeowners who put so much money and effort to keep their home intact, now they are forced to move to a new locations due to many home buyers who are moving in, and cannot take care well for their new homes, creating poor neighborhoods, and all the good home prices are plunging down to nothing!
Senior citizens are most victims ripped off their homes who are trying to sell their homes to move to assisted living facilities. Zillow and Trulia created a rip off web.
The calculations go only 2 miles radius, where the banker told me to go 5 miles radius around my house, them price it to homes who are similar to yours. The realtors are for their pockets and rip off homes from owners of their profits. Everybody is a scammer and a free loader. If they want cheap homes there is the ghetto. I actually like Zillow and Trulia a lot. They provide an interface that is easy to use and full of information. I am working with a realtor for my weekend home purchase, and it is fun to see all the homes available, inside and out, as well as the land and the neighbors street views.
I have also compiled a spreadsheet with over 50 somewhat similar homes to use a comps for the one I am looking. I find the recently sold home information very valuable, specially when I can see the pictures and really compare homes.
I never, ever look at their estimates or trends. My spreadsheet is more accurate because it contains truly similar homes in all the aspects that are important to ME. Turnstone, that is exactly how you use Zillow and Trulia.
If you use it for anything else, it either gets complicated or the information can be very inaccurate. Just type your home address into the search bar. You can also get Zillow home values by zip code as well.
These other real estate sites do as well:. You may be thinking after reading the above information that I am not a fan of Zillow. Actually, that is really far from the truth.
I love everything about Zillow except for their Zestimates of value. The other information that Zillow gathers can be really useful when you are buying or selling a home. When you are ready to buy a home, they have an excellent platform for looking at properties. The information provided is second to none, in my opinion. There is no doubt that tons of folks love their integrated Bing maps that come with every listing. These are super handy when trying to decipher what is around a particular property.
They have all the information you would expect when buying a home like the square footage, bedroom and bath count, age, lot size, taxes, etc. Where they really excel, however, is their data of the past ownership of the home and what the owner paid.
Zillow also has an awesome app for those that have a smartphone. While you are out house hunting, you can quickly and easily pull up information while in front of a home! Folks, there is a reason why Zillow is the 1 most visited real estate website on the internet. Even though many Realtors hate them because of their crude estimating model, they provide excellent data that is helpful to both buyers and sellers.
This means that its estimates can be a good starting point. However, when you are want to price a home to sell, or you want to know what a home is really worth so you can buy now , its numbers are not accurate enough.
It would be best to have a savvy real estate agent for on-point accuracy than knows the area and is successfully working it right now. Zillow also shows you how prices are trending, either up or down, in a particular location. This is certainly useful information that can help you decide where you really want to buy and when. It is always good to know where prices appear to be going when making such a large transaction.
Zillow is a useful tool, but it does not provide enough accuracy on home prices to be used exclusively. The site states that its estimates are only a starting point. Keep this in mind when you are getting your own Zestimates.
If you are selling a home for sale by owner and were not planning on meeting with an appraiser or real estate agent to help you determine the accurate market value because you thought the Zillow estimate was good enough, hopefully, this has been an eye-opener. Keep in mind that the number one reason homes do not sell is an unrealistic asking price. If you price your home incorrectly out of the gate, more than likely, you will end up selling it for less than you would have if priced correctly.
Pricing a home properly is an art and science all rolled into one. It is not accomplished very well by trusting a computer-generated value, whether Zillow or some other online valuation tool.
If you want an accurate value of your home, always consult with a local real estate professional or competent appraiser. The video does a nice job examining Zillow pricing and the accuracy of its Zestimate feature.
Take the time to understand why Zillow estimates are not reliable. The above Real Estate information on are Zillow home value estimates accurate was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett remaxexec. Thinking of selling your home? I have a passion for Real Estate and love to share my marketing expertise! Bill Gassett is a nationally recognized Real Estate leader who has been helping people move in and out of the Metrowest Massachusetts area for the past thirty-four plus years.
Great article on Zillow! Zestimates are definitely a problem, and we find that most buyers see that homes are already sold when searching. We created our own website to remind our buyers that good data is available as we remove the sold properties each day.
When thinking about Atlanta, please think of us. We would love to refer business to you as well. Thanks for the compliments Tony. I think Zillow has a great site with the exception of the valuation feature. It causes so much doubt with people. Zillow should stick with the rest of what the do well and get rid of this feature.
What a good article for homebuyers and home sellers! Thanks Renee and you make some excellent points about the value of certain amenities in a home that Zillow could never account for based on demographics! Zillow and the others could care less if you buy a house because of their website value estimates or other information. Your seasoned professional Realtor with local market experience can assist a seller with evaluating the most accurate local market value of a property.
Values can change in days based on supply and demand. Steve I agree with you. Zillow is in this to make money however they can. There is no question if you are buying or selling a home you should always consult with a local real estate professional and not a Zillow computer generated value.
Randa there are media outlets who have written about the inaccuracy of Zillow estimates of value including the Washington Post. I despise how they use our listings as the bait.
Bill, Excellent article that really gets to the core of what is good and bad with the Zestimate and Zillow in general. One brilliant point you made that is often unspoken is that agents have insight into factors Zillow will never have foundation, improvements, etc. In many markets those things have a significant impact on value, thereby making the agent the best option for an accurate value.
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