How did you obtain an accurate S&B worth before you sold it?

[C5c5]

Greetings!

I have made significant improvements and repairs to my current stix & brix (S&B) and am wanting to get it on the market to sell in about 2 months.

I know that the annual taxes estimation of a house is not accurate.

I bought this house as a forclosure and did not pay anything near market value.

I know what this house has sold for during the past 30 years, during the housing crisis, before, and after.

I still have much work to do on it yet. I might forgo some improvements because of time.

Many houses in my neighborhood have been improved for the better these past few years and I know the entire neighborhood is taken into account when determining market value.

My neighborhood is old but very safe.

I will be hiring a housing inspector very soon and will be getting more information from that.

Do I need to hire a real estate agent to determine the best ballpark asking price for my house?

I know most folks say a good real estate agent is worth the expense and am not opposed to it.
I however am told that I might be able to get away with forgoing one and doing a FSBO since my house will be a very affordable starter home and they are in high demand despite economic difficulty.

I owe very little on my S&B and will be using all sale proceeds to give me a cushion for the full-time lifestyle.

How were you able to determine an accurate market value for your S&B before you sold it?

[MRUSA14]

You can hire a licensed Real Estate Appraiser who is an expert on these things. The last time I hired one, it cost about $500. Ask your bank loan officer where to find a good appraiser, they know these things.

[TMyers17]

Have a home inspection done by a certified inspector. They will look at Comps (Comparable Properties) in the area and what they sold for.

[Funengineer]

I had two different real estate agents from two different firms do a market analysis on my last home at no cost to me. I studied their comparisons of similar homes in the community and went with the firm that I thought would do the best job marketing our home and that gave us the higher market value. Their estimated market value was $25,000 higher than the other firm.

House was listed on a Friday and we received our buyers offer on the following Monday. Glad we chose the firm and agent that we did.

[Old-Biscuit]

Input your address on these 2 sites and get a rough idea of home values


https://www.zillow.com/


https://www.realtor.com/

[Alan_Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Old-Biscuit

Input your address on these 2 sites and get a rough idea of home values


https://www.zillow.com/


https://www.realtor.com/

Another site to check is https://www.redfin.com/

[Winemaker2]

Just wondering but my thinking is those RE websites can't do any / better than your appraised value for tax purposes can they?
I assume They can get the tax info that's public info.
They dont know anything about improvement projects done or not done. They may have access to sold RE and calculate $/sq ft etc for other homes but isn't that what RE appraisers do for town tax appraisals?
It seems like a paid appraisal or courtesy valuation by a RE agent would be best where they can view the property and access sold $ for comparables?

[deandec]

Originally Posted by MRUSA14

You can hire a licensed Real Estate Appraiser who is an expert on these things. The last time I hired one, it cost about $500. Ask your bank loan officer where to find a good appraiser, they know these things.

We did this. The appraiser was significantly closer to the selling price after 8 listing months than our realtor family friends were.

[RickNC]

Realtors are great when you are buying, PITA when you are selling.

Sold our last 3 homes FSBO. As mentioned,First step was to get a real appraisal not a fluffed up so-called free appraisal just to get you to sign onto an agent. On all three homes the Appraiser,s advice was to list it 10% higher and negotiate from there.
Some places you can get on the MLS for fee only . I did that on the first two houses and it ultimately brought me a buyer on both . I bought professional looking for sale signs and. I bought 3 sandwich board open house signs.
We did open houses every two weeks or when ever another realtor had one near us. First house took about 45 days to sell. The second we sold in about 3 weeks. We sold our last house on our first open house to the second couple who walked in the door. Who can resist a heated indoor swim spa in NY in February? [emoji846]
All the contract and legal work was done by our attorney. The last house he charged us $600 (2013)
It was nice not paying $24K commission on the sale. But for me, avoiding all the hassle and drama we had in the past with realtors was worth at least as much as the money.
IF you sell FSBO expect to get flooded with realtors trying to get you to list. Funny part of that is nearly everyone of them will say the exact same thing. They must all read from the same cue card.

[Winemaker2]

Originally Posted by deandec

We did this. The appraiser was significantly closer to the selling price after 8 listing months than our realtor family friends were.

I dont doubt that RE will tend to err high to get your business. One logic check you can do is ask them to review their comps with you and their rationale for pricing yours vs just taking a nember.

[Blastvalve]

Originally Posted by MRUSA14

You can hire a licensed Real Estate Appraiser who is an expert on these things. The last time I hired one, it cost about $500. Ask your bank loan officer where to find a good appraiser, they know these things.

If your buyer is going to get a mortgage, their Bank will require an appraisal of the property to use as their basis of its analysis on how much they can lend, MRUSA is spot on, if you want it done the way the end user is going to do it, get it professionally appraised. Thanks to COVID shutdowns, the appraisal world has been really slow, you may even get a deal on pricing.

Of note, the buyer’s Bank cannot use your appraisal in their analysis as it won’t meet the regulatory requirement for “arms length”, but unless things in your market change drastically, any Bank valuation should come out similar to yours and if it doesn’t, you have a good leg to stand on in negotiations.

Lastly, an appraisal is typically good for 6 months to a year, however with the way our Economic world is changing we could see the local markets shift more rapidly.

Your local Bank should be able to give you names that they use. If you were a client of mine the above is exactly what I’d tell you to do.

[jacwjames]

Just started seeing articles popping up on home sales. They are all over the place so who knows what will happen. But if you miss an opportunity now you may have to wait a long time to get a decent offer if the market goes south.


We sold our old house last year. It was in an older established neighborhood that had recently expanded so we had plenty of traffic.

We used the realtor that helped us sell some investment property we had bought years before. We learned our lesson back in 2008 era when we tried to sell it ourselves and foolishly thought it was worth more then it was. We turned down an offer for $150K wanting closer to our asking price of $180. +10 years later we were back at trying to sell it but had to invest in realtor fees, surveys, perk tests, to subdivide it and get a decent price. Ultimately we ended up with less then $150K that we were offered +10 years earlier. We were also trying to sell my wife's fathers house and made the same mistake, missed the market and had to hold/rent the house for + 10years ultimately selling for much less then a valid offer we had initially. Lesson learned.

So when we got to the point of selling our old house we told the realitor we did not want to sit on it long. This was late in 2018 when the market was booming. The realtor provided comps but left it up to us. We recognized our house was older and may not appeal to all parties. We asked high initially but after getting little interest lowered the price. We got an offer but when they went to increase their loan amount to include "ZERO" down they lost the loan. The second good offer stated they would pay full price but be able to keep ~$6K for closing costs which seemed like a good compromise since they didn't have to go back to the bank for more $$. We ultimately sold the house for what we thought was a decent price but it took +5 months.

During that same time a contractor started and completely built a very small house across the street and got close to what we sold ours for. Kind of a kick in the pants but we were out of the old house.

So it depends>>>> are you feeling lucky!

[TonyMac]

You are going to have to have the house appraised for the new buyer to get a loan, do that now. Use this info to price your home. Zillow is a joke for setting price, worth exactly what you paid for the service. My house is a 4/4, Zillow thinks it's a 3/2 and priced it accordingly. If the appraisal is considered old when the buyer agrees to a price, updating the appraisal is cheaper than getting a new one.

[jacwjames]

Both legitimate offers we had needed to have their own independent house inspection and bank appraisal so it's not necessary for you to do it as they wouldn't take yours anyway.


The house inspections were interesting in that neither found issues that I thought they would. In one case the inspector recommended something that was completely none negotiable as far as we were concerned so we just said NO and the buyer accepted it. On another issue an inspector wanted us to bring the house up to current electrical code, again NO, you are not obligated to this if built before a certain date. I did add a couple GFCI circuits in the kitchen as it was the right thing to do.



So you can spend lots of $$$ trying to anticipate problems or just wait on the buyers inspection report and decide what you willing to fix.