Appraising A Home Without Taking Professional Help

Appraising a house needs a professional training. There are many parameters which actually play a very important part in determining the present value of a property. However, it’s a very much natural and common curiosity to know about the value of the home you are living in. People may have different plans like someone may want to shift in a smaller house or to get a loan for some purpose. It’s also good always to know the real value of the asset we have so that if required we can make good use of it to improve our financial condition. There are few ways which one can try to get an idea of the financial worth of the home he is residing in.

Make A list Of The Features Of Your House

Have a pen and paper and answer these questions: What is the size of your home? How many rooms are there? How it is divided? Like how, if there are three rooms one must be a living room another one can be a family room and the third one can be a bedroom. See how many bathrooms are there? Are there attached baths for every room or is there one master bath? Are there walk in closets in the bedrooms. Is the kitchen covered or open? Is there a basement? Is the basement original or converted one? How the parking is? Is there a covered garage? Whether it’s attached or separately built? What kind of floors are there? What material is used to build the house? Whether it’s brick or stones? What kind of roof is there? The home is a Ranch or Multi-story? It’s a single family home, multifamily home or a condo? Other features like pool, garden area also needs to be listed. See what is the condition of the home? How old is it and does it require big repairs or renovation?

Neighbourhood and Location

Now try and understand what kind of location is your home is in? Are in living in such a location where many houses get sold every now and then? Is this an area where the sales are very less? It is urban or rural? All this affects the property value. See the neighbourhood status. What kind of school zone is that? Is there enough employment in your area and people may want to get settled over there after they complete their studies? In short, how interesting the people will be to get settled in the area and can someone expect a regular rent from your home?

Take Help From Online Tools

Now see, what is the ongoing rate in your area? You can take help from various online sources in this matter. There are many online tools to get a free appraisal but when you are just doing it to get an idea, it’s a waste of money and at the same time, you can also do the same things by using some other free sources.

Not necessarily these online tools will give you an accurate amount but to get an idea you can try with these.

Zillow.com

Zillow is the biggest real estate database and it also offers Zestimate, which is nothing but an estimated value of your home. People have an option to sign up there and post you claim your home, they will send you update and if there is any change in the data base they will send you the updates about it. We cannot assure the accuracy but you can just try it out and then compare it with the realistic data you have.

Redfin

This is considered to be better than Zillow, as far as accuracy is concerned. This is a brokerage and a real estate research site, which can provide an estimate of your home based on the characteristics it has.

realtor.com

This also is a site which can help you to get the estimate. This is really something to recommend and you don’t need to sign up there to get the estimated value of your home. Usually you get most of the homes listed there but unfortunately, few houses are still not found on realtor.com.

eepraisal.com

This fetches the data from various other online sources and gives you an estimate, if you are not an unfortunate one to get your home listed there.

Chase Home Value estimator

Here you just need to enter the address and by clicking on the estimate button, you can get the estimated value of your home.

There are few other but we have mentioned the popular once to just let you know that there are many tools and techniques available get an estimate.

Find Information On The Recent Sales Activities

Gather the information about three houses for sale currently and three homes which have got sold in your area recently. The source to get this information is the online listing from the listing websites. The homes which you are collecting the data of, should be of the same size and having almost the same characteristics, age and condition and they should be in the same neighbourhood. Keep the sale price information in a spreadsheet and try to arrive on an average price basis on the sale price and the square foot.

Compare And Find Value

So after you find the average per square feet price in your area, you can calculate the total price of your home which will be average per square feet price in your area multiplied by the size of your home. So, if the size of your home is 1000 square feet and the average rate is $500 per square feet then the estimated value of home will be $500,000. Now you can compare and make the adjustments seeing the other prices like if your property has more bathrooms you can increase it a little. Please also consider the property condition well to make the adjustments.

All this will give you an idea of the worth of your home though you always have an option to talk to a professional to understand what kind of adjustments in price are common in your area.