Determine Fair Market Value, Home Property Value, House Market Value

Ways to Determine Fair Market Value for Your Home

There is more than one way to determine fair market value for your home, and the method chosen will affect the house market value. Your home property value can be evaluated using tax assessments, comparative market analysis, or even square footage information, and each of these methods may give a different value for your home.

If you want to determine market value without paying for a professional appraiser, you can do this in any of the three ways mentioned and arrive at a fair and reasonable house market value for your property.

Many lenders and real estate professionals prefer to use the comparative market analysis for the most accurate home property value, but this is not always possible because recent sales in your area may not always take place (especially if you live in a rural area). Another method may be needed to evaluate the house's market value instead.

It's possible for you to determine fair market value for your home without having to pay for an appraisal or other fees. You can choose any of the methods available to find your home property value, but your final choices should depend on the local housing market, recent sales in your area, and other property characteristics.

The Internet offers many online resources that can be very helpful in this area. There are websites that have house market value calculators which can assist you in evaluating your home property value. Visit the value of my house page for more information on using internet searches.

Using Comparative Market Analysis to Find Your Home Property Value

Comparative market analysis, also referred to as CMA, is often used to help determine fair market value of a home. CMA uses comparisons between your home and the recent sale of similar homes in your area to find your house market value. This method takes into consideration any differences between your home and the homes recently sold in the area.

This is usually the preferred way to determine market value, because it includes many relevant factors that the other methods may not look at when evaluating your home property value. These factors can include location, home design, home size, age, and amenities.

Sometimes it's not possible to use comparative market analysis to determine fair market value. If the home sales in your local area are slow, or the homes being sold are not similar to yours, then you may not be able to find enough recent home sales to accurately determine your house market value using only CMA.

In this case then you may need to use the assessment value or the square footage method instead to find your home property value amount, although these may not be as accurate as the CMA method.

The Use of Tax Assessments to Determine Market Value

Tax assessments can help you determine fair market value of your home, but the assessed value of your home is not the same as the house market value. Many local tax authorities use a percentage of the home property value as the tax assessed value, and if this is the case in your local area then the assessed value will need to be adjusted for this factor.

This method will work regardless of the amenities or square footage your house may have. The average tax assessment for your community will need to be determined, and so will the average sales price for the neighborhood. This method will work to determine home property value for any home or neighborhood.

The average sale price in the community should be divided by the tax assessment value, and the result will be the multiplier that you will use. If the last ten home sales in your neighborhood averaged one hundred thousand dollars, and the tax assessments averaged ninety two thousand dollars, the multiplier would be roughly one point zero nine.

Now you can use this multiplier to determine fair market value for any home in the area. Take the assessment value of the home and multiply it by the specified multiplier and you can find the house market value.

Square Footage and the House Market Value

Square footage is another factor that can be used to determine fair market value for your property. If similar home sales cannot be found, or there are no recent home sales, you can use the square footage of your home to find your home property value. You will need to look at homes that are very similar to yours, and determine an average price per square foot.

This amount is then multiplied by the square footage of your home to arrive at the house market value. For this method to be accurate the homes you research must be almost identical to yours. The same number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and the same amenities and styles, must be present for this method to accurately determine fair market value.

Any differences between homes must be evaluated, and the home property value will need to be adjusted for these differences.