Arizona Home Value Estimates
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Your home is worth what someone willing to pay for it. This statement is not intended to shock, but, instead to prepare you for what to expect when considering putting your home on the market. Whether the housing market is in a Bull or Bear market the statement holds true for Arizona home value estimates or any other state. When times are good the house you live in could fetch well over the list price in MLS. From 2000 to well into 2004 receiving an offer $50,000 over list price was not uncommon. Prospective home buyers found themselves mired in stiff competition to purchase seemingly any home fit their basic criteria. Now in 2008 and for the foreseeable future we find ourselves buried in this bear market. The competition now exists for the home sellers who are many times out priced on the lower end by foreclosures, short sales, investors who are dumping properties, and others who just need out.
The concept of what someone is willing to pay for your home puts home sellers in a position they likely never could have imagined a few years ago. When deciding on the value of your home a popular website Zillow is good from the sense that it begins to paint a picture for those who are considering putting their house on the market. What the website lacks however is current conditions, such as pending home sales, whether the home sale was a foreclosure or a short sale, or many other factors that a real estate agent would take into account when putting together comparable properties or what agents call comps. Comps versus AppraisalsAppraisals cannot be done by most real estate agents as most are not appraisers. What they can do is put together a list of comps for your home and determine a list price based off of a comprehensive set of data. Comps put together by an experience agent will look deeply into where a home should be priced when first entered into the AZ MLS. For home value estimates your real estate agent should look first at recent home sales in your neighborhood. At first glance this sounds pretty simple... but, the only consideration is not the price the home sold for. For those homes that have sold, the Realtor will also consider items such as Cumulative Days on the Market (CDOM), was the property bank owned, what do the homes that sold have that yours doesn't and the opposite, what does you home have that the others didn't, do you or do they have a different determining factor, such as do you or they back to power lines or a major street, etc. The bottom line is that there are many factors that will determine the listing price for a new home on the market.Home appraisals by appraisers are used most often when a home is either under contract and the bank orders one or, when owners are doing refinancing their home. The appaisals themselves are composed of homes that have sold only, as they cannot take homes that are active or pending into consideration for the value of a given property. They are extremely skilled at comparing sold real estate to "like" properties. Appraisers will look at everything from neighborhood sales, land size, square footage, pools, as well as many other considerations for what they believe your home to be worth from the set of Sold homes data. Many people consider ordering an appraisal of their home before they list to determine where their home should be priced when it gets listed in for expample the Arizona MLS. However, this step is not only not necessary, but, many times unjustified if you are choosing an experience real estate agent to list your home. Fees for home appraisals typically run in the hundreds of dollars. An agent listing your home will do it for free, as they will typically get paid when they sell your home. Common place in the MLS today is to see a reference to home's appraisals being 10's of thousands of dollars higher than the current list price in the MLS. A last statement about a new home entering the market. Once you've determined that you will be listing your home with a real estate agent to be put into the MLS you should strongly consider your competition. The first few weeks of a listing are the most critical. Buyers agents who have shown all the existing properties to their clients are then waiting for the new listings to come out as they have not yet found home they had been looking for. The agents have likely set up an automatic email to be generated to their clients and themselves for a specific set of criteria, if your home matches the set it will probably get a visit by the prospective home buyers. As home sellers you have the most leverage during this period as being a new listing the competition will be greater and owners typically don't have to be as flexible on their selling price. Once the listing has been out for a while, sellers are more willing to accept lower offers as they many times just want out of thewier current situation. Please contact me if I can help clarify any of the points listed here or answer any other questions regarding arizona real estate. |