BLOG: Determining a home's value no simple process

As I begin blogging about the experiences of my company and myself here on Patch, my hope is that I’ll begin to field plenty of questions from readers in order to provide just the kind of Real Estate knowledge for which you’re seeking.

Preparing to write this first article, it only took a couple of minutes of reflection to decide upon a topic in lieu of requests: “What is my home worth?”

That was an easy conclusion for me because, as the owner and broker of a Real Estate company that only works with home sellers, you can imagine home value is the most popular topic I tackle on a daily basis.

So what’s the answer? Well, it’s not that simple. The easy definition is this: The value of your home is what a buyer is willing to pay for it. Of course, that’s a blanket statement that covers the value of any product, service or commodity.

There’s a lot to consider when pricing your home. What’s the square footage? How many bedrooms and bathrooms do you have? Have you reinvested to update your home? Where is it located? Once we’ve answered those questions, and a few more, a comparative market analysis will help us arrive at a solid offering price that will place it well in the market among homes that offer comparable qualities.

But here’s the kicker – you and your agent won’t be the only ones to assign your home a value during your sales process. There will be - in most cases when a home purchase is being financed – an appraisal ordered that your buyer’s lender will use to determine a slew of factors that will impact the loan.

And it’s not uncommon for the appraised value of the home to come in differently than the value set by you and your agent via the comparative market analysis process. And, as a real estate attorney recently suggested to me, you could have six different appraisers return six completely different appraisals. It’s just that subjective of a process.

This is a topic I intend to write more about in the near future. In the meantime, please send me your questions regarding this topic and others at Adam@ListingHousesForLess.com and feel free to browse our archived articles on our Web site, www.ListingHousesForLess.com.