Thread: Best place to find home values

The county office where property sales are recorded may have that information if you are in a county that records the sale prices - some allow $1 to be recorded. That way you will see the actual sale prices for the area you are interested in.

Almost all the online property value tools are inaccurate to the point of being useless. Local real estate expertise is what you need. Hire an agent to represent you. Now let the agent bashing begin!

Originally Posted by markbrian

Now let the agent bashing begin!

Aww, that would be too easy... Again, MY OPINION is that COMPS that are more than a few (more than three) months old are better used as toilet paper than as house values, due to the falling market conditions.

I like the "county recorder" idea, as that will show FSBOs as well as listed properties.

I guess the best way to figure market value is knwing the area, it's trends and what you want to do with it... I would gladly pay TOP DOLLAR and even a little more than current FMV, if the thing has good +CF and I was intending to hold and rent it out (hence the +CF.) Now If I needed to come up with PURE CA$H, the price I would pay would be WELL, WELL, WELL below FMV, so that I was sure that I was buying low enough that I could rehab it and sell it off quickly (even at a discounted price,) and still have a margin for my efforts.

So finding the absolute FMV reall depends on what you are looking to do with it.

Later!!

I use not just the MLS but also CRS which pulls directly from most local county online tac records. The problem with CRS or Zillow is it cannot tell the difference between when someone refinanced and when someone actually bought the home. Plus the advantage of interior pictures and the details about the properties in the MLS make getting more relevent comps easier. Knowing the local market makes it easier for me to give accurate advice. The real problem lies in sellers that want to argue the facts-my house is worth more because it is my house kind of thing.

I agree using comps older than 90 days is really not worthwhile.

The problem with the county records is you will have to sift through them to find the ones that are comparable to your property. You don't need to use all of the comparable properties to determine value, you just have to have enough to make a good comparison.

Pay for an appraisal and let a professional do the job the right way.