Computer Research Helps To Sell Your FSBO

Computer Research Helps To Sell Your FSBO, one of the most efficient ways to value the worth of your home is by taking a little research trip on your computer.
Normally, you might physically go to your town’s courthouse, find the property tax folks office and ask to see the property taxes for your surrounding neighborhood. And if they had time to do this, maybe ask them for a property tax and recent market appraisal for the surrounding properties in your neighborhood.

That would always prove to be a long, drawn out procedure and hopefully, through all this, you could find friendly clerks to assist you. But if you desired an easier, faster way to accumulate this same information, just goto your computer, goto to Google (you’ve heard of them, haven’t you?), then type in your county name and state, along with the words, property tax records.

IF, your county has a website, then it will come up listed on the screen. If it does, click on the link and go there. You will now be privy to all sorts of amazing information about your county’s tax record.

You usually can look taxes and other information up by name, address, or a couple of other criteria. Type in your address and the next screen you see should show you every property on your street, along with who owns it and other relevant information. Click again on your home’s address, or name, then you will be taken to a page that list all types of other information about your property, such as it’s estimated market value (the value, the county estimates your property to be, that value times the counties millage rate, tax rate, should equal what you are charged for your property’s taxes for the year).

Armed with this information, I would first call your county tax office and ask the clerk when the last appraisal was done in your area of the county. If they tell you recently, then that market value should be pretty darn accurate, if however, it has been a while, then I’d do a couple more things.

Type into your internet browser, the URL address: http://www.zillow.com and type in your full address into it’s finder box and press enter. You will then be taken to an amazing site with a picture of your house in the middle of the screen, surrounded by all the other houses in your neighborhood, surrounding it.

Next you’ll realize that what you’re seeing on the roof are numbers, preceded by a $. They all represent home values that Zillow.com think are the approximate values of those homes at today’s’s prices.

Before you go right out and put up the ad and put flyers all over the city, keep in mind that these values can be over-rated by Zillow, because they do these estimates as good as they can, but they approach them from a national value view (in other words, generally what the national sales, per square foot, should be selling for, and then adding in a little wiggle room for your given area). Some real estate salespeople refer to this method as a W.A.G. (wild ass guess).

While, some people may claim that, Zillow.com, has been around for a long time and also successful, for a long time, which suggests to me, they can’t be that far off, for a starting point.

So this is my best opinion on taking values from this source: Write down all the home value, in your subdivision that you think are up to your homes quality. Put those values on the left side of a sheet of paper, on the right side, of that piece of paper put down the appropriate square feet of each home (these figures are obtained by putting your cursor over each home and letting it rest, then the numbers will appear).

I would suggest you take at least ten, if not more home prices and their corresponding square foot numbers, then simply add each column up and divide the total homes listed in your list. Now do the same with the numbers you find on the right side of your paper (the square footage of the homes, added up, then divided by the number of homes you have listed.

Now then, the next to last step in this process, divide the home average value number (on the left) by the average square footage (the number on the right) and that will result in the average price per square foot of all those homes you have listed in front of you.

Finally, armed with that number, just multiply it times your own homes square footage and that formula will produce the approximate listing price for your home.

If all ten (or more) of the homes on your list averaged $145,000.00 and your ten homes averaged 2400 square feet, then: $145k divided by 2400 sq. feet would = $60.42/square foot

Then if your homes is 2650 square feet, then 2650 times $60.42 would equal = $160,113, or about $160,000.

If it were me, I’d squish that down by about a factor of 5 % (due to the national values compared to the local values): $160,000. X 95% = about $152,000.00

This should probably put you pretty close to the real estate listing market value of your local area. But do expect to come further down in price for your “selling price” in a BAD ECONOMY, which we’ve been going through, in the past few years.

Realistically, in a bad economy the real estate market has been seeing the “normally accepted selling prices”. go down as much as 5 – 10 %, of the listing price. If the market is good, then you can expect to get anywhere between your full list price and as much as 5% off the listed price.

A good or a bad market is a factor you need to find out and the ONLY way is to consult a banker, you might know, or a REALTOR, or even a Mortgage Broker, you may know.

They usually will be happy to let you know, but usually, the banker won’t tend to inflate the market as much as others (they have less vested interest in the conclusion).

There are many other factors in helping to sell your home yourself, but those are for a different day and a different time… Good Luck!