So everyone wants to know. What is my home worth? And how to find the value of your house. In this video Sheila Monson, a top producing Realtor® in Alaska explains this in great detail. She covers the importance of having a CMA (comparative market analysis done on your home or property.
What is my home worth? Sheila Monson explains in this informative video how to find the value of your home!
Having a CMA done is so important! Read more here to find out why!
A CMA is a comparative market analysis. It’s an activity that compiles statistical and historical information on properties that are like your property and what they sold for in the very recent history. It’s very similar to what an appraiser does for a lender. Appraisers right now in the Willow area are charging around $3,000. Some of them are coming in a little bit more reasonable but we’re seeing over and over where they’re about $3,000. That’s usually something that a person does in the course of BUYING their house. A buyer typically pays for this because it’s a requirement of their loan program. A CMA is like an appraisal “light”. You know, like you have Bud, and you have Bud Light. Well, an “appraisal light” is what a CMA is. It takes approximately three to four hours to get all that statistical information compiled and that’s after we go out and see the property. So today we’re going to spend an hour on the road just driving to the property and then we’re probably going to spend about a good half hour walking around the property and inside the house looking at its features and benefits. The rest of the work is going to be done on the computer. This is something I do when you are a client of mine and you list your house for sale. I go through this activity, and this gives us a range of what we can expect to put it on the market and get a buyer for. We base that on history as well as current market tendencies and what is going on with the current market. In the state of Alaska only a licensed realtor and a licensed appraiser can do that. In the state of Alaska, it is not public information on how much a house sold for. There are other websites and programs out there, that give you a z estimate. But they are only grabbing public information. Alaska is a non-disclosure state. In the state of Alaska how much you sold your house for is not public information. That is confidential information, that is only accessible through a licensed realtor or a licensed appraiser. Sometimes clients will want me to just throw a number out there for them of what I think their property is worth. Like a SWAG. (Scientific wild ass guess). I never do that because there’s just too many things that could be different. There might be different countertop surfaces, when was the last time the house was painted? You know, compared to other things that have sold (in the same area in very recent history). All those things add up and make a difference. Things like how old is the heating system? How old is the septic system? How old is the roof? You may have two identical houses and those things be wildly different and you’ll have a very different market value. So, what a CMA does is it gives us a range from low to high of what the market can bear. Then I sit down with my clients. If you are selling your home, I would sit down with you and I would talk about the strategy of where to go in that range.
So when we were at the property I took some pictures with my cell phone. These pictures will not be used for marketing. They are pictures so that when I’m doing the CMA back in my office, I can use them for a reference point. To remind me what features the property has and so I can compare the features of this home to the other ones I will be using in my comparisons. It is not unusual to look through 10 or 15 different properties to narrow it down to 3. When I do a CMA it brings us a range of value. That range is only going to be good for as long as the market doesn’t change. One thing we know about real estate is that houses are selling every single day. Like an appraisal report that an appraiser does for a lender, that appraisal report is only good for 60 days because the market could change a lot in 60 days. The same thing is true for a CMA. I can do a CMA now for a client, and they might wait 6 months to list it with me. The market might have changed so much that it might require me to do another CMA to make sure the correct value is put on the property. If you have any more questions about the value of your home, feel free to reach out to me. 907.841.0840 I would love to help you!
Sheila Monson