Many people when they are looking to sell their house or even buy a house, go up on the internet to try to find out what the value of a property is. This only works to an extent.
Many people try one of these services which does a computerized valuation of a property. These rarely are correct.
Let me explain how these automated processes work. They look at the subject property and look at the homes that have recently sold within a certain radius of that property. Now if the subject property and included houses were all four bedroom Colonials between 2200 and 2400 square feet, then you have a chance of being correct. Again just a chance because it does not take into account upgrades, condition of the property and much more. But what if that radius includes different type of properties? For example what if the home that you’re looking at is a 4000 square foot Colonial with 5 bedrooms, a 3 garage and a pool on a one and a half acre lot? And within the specified radius of that property is a condo complex with two bedroom 1200 square foot condos. What happens is that the computer program adds up the value of all the homes that sold within that radius. It will take the 4,000 square-foot Colonials that sold for $800,000 plus and then it will take the $200,000 condos and add of the value of of all those homes together. They then divide by the number of the total properties that were in the equation and come up with a value.
I think you can see that this does not give a true indication of what a 4000 square foot Colonial should be worth. To get a proper valuation of a property, the human touch is absolutely necessary. And an experience Realtor who knows the area will not include those condos into the equation. In order to get a proper valuation listen to what your Realtor says. Don’t believe a property is worth a certain value just because it computer algorithm says it is.