How to Determine if Your Online Home Estimate is Accurate
The real estate market is ever-changing, so “it depends” and “maybe” are answers you will hear a lot. There is no way for you to figure out exactly what your home is worth without hiring a professional appraiser. However, online home estimates can be helpful in some occasions, while there are other times the figures received are really high or low. Below are a few questions to ask to help you determine how accurate your personal online home estimate is.
- How old is your neighborhood?
If your home is in a registered historic district, this is likely considered in the estimate. If the home is new, public records are likely up-to-date. The biggest discrepancies are seen in homes that fall somewhere in the middle.
- Have structural changes been done, and if so, were permits pulled?
If your home is older there is a good chance that any structural changes done may not have required a permit. As a result, public records will have no updates of these changes. For example, if you live in a duplex that was once half of a 6-bedroom home and records haven’t been updated since these changes have occurred, your estimate will be very off.
- Does your neighborhood border one that is either drastically less or more expensive?
Your home’s close proximity to this dissimilar district could influence an online home estimate that is provided by one of these online calculators.
- Have major changes taken place in your area?
There is little chance the online tool you are using knows if there have been a number of homes broken into or vandalized recently or if a school the neighborhood is zoned for has suddenly become recognized for academic excellence. These types of drastic changes will affect a true estimate given by an appraiser.
- Have you known all of your neighbors your entire life?
If you currently live in the house you grew up in and your children play daily with kids of people you grew up with it is safe to say there is little turnover in your area. Although this makes for an exceptionally close community it also means that there are minimal market changes for the website to use to determine a home value.
- Does your home have unique upgrades?
If you converted an old lighthouse into a home or have added enough solar panels to practically power the entire house these are upgrades that estimating tools may not be capable of accurately accessing, even if it does know about them.
There are a number of factors that contribute to a home estimate provided by an online source. Ask yourself the above questions to get an idea of how accurate the online home estimate is, and never rely solely on this information when determining a listing price.