The fair market value of your home may not be the price you paid for it. The value of a house changes with age, remodeling and the local home market, and the neighborhood around it varies. Knowing the value may be a significant element when dividing up an inheritance, assigning property after a divorce or pricing your property when you set it to the market. You can discover what your home is worth without hiring an appraiser to do it.
Collect information on comparable sales from the past six months. Comparable sales are houses like yours who have roughly the exact same square footage and number of bedrooms and baths, and are situated in your neighborhood or a similar location. The easiest way to do so is to operate with a real-estate representative with access to sales information online. You can also browse real-estate advertisements or drive through your neighborhood and speak to anyone who’s sold their home recently.
Weed out costs which don’t really represent your market. If one house is on a crowded highway while yours is in a quiet cul-de-sac, that is not a good comparison. Also, houses which sold really quickly after being recorded, or that sat for a year before selling, may not be great comparisons either: Long or short times on the market signify the vendor priced the house either too low or too high.
Total up the remaining sale costs, then divide by the amount of sales. That will provide you the average sale price for a house like yours. To be a real measure of fair market value, you will need at least three to five similar houses.
Make adjustments for important differences between your house and others. By way of example, if the average sale price was $225,000, but you’ve only spent $15,000 remodeling your kitchen, you need to set your home’s value at $240,000.