Home Worth?
There is no substitute for an Appraiser who will walk your property and document all the interior and exterior upgrades that you have done to your home. he or she will make detailed sketch of your home’s current floor plan which could be very different than the one on County records. And then he will use different Pricing Methods from Replacement or Utility Cost methods to determine how much your home is worth.
This practice itself was not bullet proof as we saw during the height of recession where banks were sending appraisers from Salinas to price properties in Los Gatos. Now, services like Trulia and Zillow have opted to replace this appraiser with computer algorithm to arrive at a home’s value. So, if you are using these services to estimate your home’s value, be very guarded on how to interpret their numbers.
We decided to test what a homeowner would experience if they decided to price their home with the Trulia and Zillow. In our case we are pricing a home that is under contract with us for Property Management Service and we know the home’s condition and amenities rather well. Table below shows the results of this pricing :
| 16500 Marchmont Dr, Los Gatos | 16500 Marchmont Dr, Los Gatos |
| Trulia | Zillow |
| $1,690,000 | $1,552,428 |
| 2 bed/2 bath | 3 bed/2 bath |
As you can see even the basic floor plan information that these 2 services report are different let alone the price difference of $137,572 which is a huge sum for a home owner to justify.
Granted that this is a small sample size, but this is the exact same process that a home owner could follow in determining their home’s worth. So, how can now choose which value is closer to their home’s fair market value.
There is plenty of posts on the web about the inaccuracy of Zillow’s home valuations. But we also don’t have any visibility to how Trulia arrives at their valuations to assign more faith to their valuations as well.
Bottom line is that you will need to rely on a local real estate agent to help you sift through the noise that you find on internet and determine your home’s fair market value.
So, Contact Us to get a Free Home Value report that you can use to pre-market your home to perspective buyers and investors.
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