HOME VALUES
Selling
your home?
Ask
O.Kheir to help you gather information from several
sources and compare the findings rather than rely on just one approach
to home valuation. Read why sellers choose O. Kheir to quicky market
their property for the best market values. Click here.
Your
home's market value is an important factor in a long list of financial
decisions, including selling the home, refinancing your mortgage,
borrowing
against your equity, estimating your annual property tax bill, buying
homeowner's
insurance, calculating the expected return on remodeling costs,
managing
your other investments, estate planning and so on. The trick is
figuring
out how much your home is worth -- and remembering that how much you
paid
for it months or years ago isn't relevant to its current market value.
It's not a bad idea to gather information from several sources and
compare
the findings, rather than relying on just one approach to home
valuation.
Here
are four
suggestions to start:
Call
Mr. Kheir, your REALTOR®, at Cook Real Estate Sales. Even if you're
not
planning to sell your home right away, our REALTORS® will be
willing
to prepare a comparable market analysis (CMA) for you as a marketing
service
with the goal of getting your business whenever you decide to move. A
Cook Real Estate Sales, Inc. CMA shows the prices of recently sold homes that are
comparable
to yours and the prices of comparable homes on the market. Our
market-savvy
REALTOR® can give you a rough idea of what your home would be
worth,
given its size and condition and local market conditions.
You
may also want to purchase a professional appraisal. Unlike a Cook Real Estate Sales, Inc.
Properties CMA, a professional appraisal is not free. However, the
several
hundred dollars you'll pay for an appraisal, depending on size of your
home and the complexity of the work, could be money well spent if
you're
making a major financial decision that hinges on the value of your
home.
Appraisers rely on an in-person inspection of your home, recent sales
of
comparable homes and other data to arrive at an opinion of value. The
appraiser's
report is a full-blown description of your home and the criteria used
to
formulate the valuation.
Go
to neighborhood open houses. Open houses are a good opportunity to view
comparable homes for sale in your neighborhood and chat with real
estate
professionals about the local real estate market. Two things to
consider:
It's not easy to be objective about your own home and you shouldn't
assume
that the listing price on a for-sale necessarily reflects the home's
true
market value. If you keep those points in mind, information gathered at
open houses can be worth considering along with data from Cook Real Estate Sales, Inc.
Properties
and other sources.
