Real Estate Comps: How to Find Comparables in House Sales

Table of Content

• What goes into a comps analysis?
• See local market trends
• Vacation Homes in Gunzenhausen
• How real estate agents use MLS comps
• How to compare house prices in 5 steps

Comps help determine the selling price for your home, or its value for a home equity line of credit or refinance. While a seller can pull some data themselves, there’s no substitute for an experienced agent who knows the local market and recognizes the pricing pitfalls that home sellers need to avoid. See how to find comparables in home sales to make sure you have accurate house pricing. The MLS can help the real estate agent stay on top of the local trends in the market and find the best selling price for their clients. When an appraiser is used, they will find comps to help them assess the home’s value.

Merely finding the price that a random home is selling for in your area won’t provide actionable information for either a sale or a new home purchase. Instead, you must find the price range of homes that share similar characteristics to your own home. That way, you’re operating off the best possible information and can set your budget and expectations accordingly. If possible, you should be looking for comparables close to your home. Comps nearby a home will typically have more weight in an appraisal, all other things being equal.

What goes into a comps analysis?

This makes AVMs a great way to begin your research, but they aren’t going to be able to factor in things like recent upgrades and location factors. If you look through similar listings and feel like your house isn’t up to snuff, you might think about remodeling before putting your home on the market. But before you hire a contractor, determine if the cost of a remodel will be worth the value it will add to your property. RealtyTrac – RealtyTrac allows you to perform a general search on recently sold homes in your area. However, you can only search by county rather than a specific address or neighborhood.

Typically, an appraisal is required by the buyer’s lender to make sure they haven’t offered more than the home is really worth. Occasionally, sellers use the services of an appraiser to price their home better too. Understanding real estate comparables and the state of the market in your local area is essential. It can help you make an informed decision about buying or selling a property.

See local market trends

If you’re looking at comps further back than three months, dump them. In fact, in some of the fastest-sales-pace cities, such asNew York, Miami, and San Diego, homes move so rapidly that sellers should look only at the prior 60 days of sales, if possible. Another way to check comps is to use a reputable online home value estimator, also called an automated valuation model tool. These tools pull in market sales data, analyze and compare it to your property, and return a suggested list price.

If you scroll down even further to the bottom of the page, you’ll see a heading titled “Nearby Recently Sold Homes,” and a “View More Recently Sold Homes” button right below. If you’re looking to buy and don't want to pay too much, finding good comps in the area can help you understand what the home is worth before you make an offer. The price of your home today can’t be compared with the selling price of your neighbor’s identical home six months ago.

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The home could also be priced too low if they are looking for a fast house sale or many offers. It is vital to remember that the asking price for a home can change at a moment’s notice. One seller’s opinion of value does not translate to the value of your property.

How real estate agents use MLS comps

If you are in my area and have a home to sell, please feel free to reach out. If a real estate agent presents you with comps for your house all over the map in terms of style, the value provided will probably be inaccurate. If you own a townhouse, don’t check single-family homes or multi-families. Your comparable properties need to be as similar as possible, so only look for those same classifications of homes.

Generally, they have accurate data about the number of beds and baths because it’s used to calculate taxes due. At the top of the screen, under “For sale,” filter for “Sold” so you’re only seeing the yellow dots. On the upper-right, be certain you are sorting by “Newest” listings so you are looking at the most recently sold properties. Start your search for comps on Zillow by typing your city and state into the search bar. If you live in a large city, like Boston, you can also search by neighborhood. Get free, objective, performance-based recommendations for top real estate agents in your area.

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You can also check online marketplaces, searching the sold prices based on ZIP code. Sites like Zillow or Trulia should let you filter recently sold homes and could even have a pricing feature to find comps. Finding true comparables without the services of an agent can be challenging for sure.

For instance, there may be a significant price difference between a home with a leaking roof and another that has a brand new roof. When running comps, make sure you take into account the condition of all parts of the homes you’re comparing. Whether you’re buying or selling, pulling comps is a critical step toward making sure you make the right financial decision.

How to Find Selling Price of Homes in My Area

Table of Content

• Pay attention to the type of home
• Homes for sale nearby Gunzenhausen, Germany
• ways to find real estate comps in your area
• The Home Seller’s Guide to Understanding Comparable Sales
• Eichler Homes: Bringing Mid-Century Modern to the Masses

It’s updated regularly based on market conditions and can show you the longer price trends in your area. Yes, there are 34 pet friendly vacation homes and places to stays that are available in or near Gunzenhausen that you may consider. Our holiday rentals include top amenities such as indoor/outdoor swimming pools, kitchen facilities, gyms, hot tubs, Internet connectivity, and more. County record sites can provide an even more in-depth look at the characteristics of specific properties and area trends. When you compare your home with others, stay within 0.5 acre.

When you know the things to look for and how to interpret them, you’ll be well on your way to making the soundest decisions as you navigate your home search. If you don't want to consult an agent, a quick bit of internet research can give you the information you need to make your comparisons. Many sites like Redfin, Realtor and Zillow have "Find A Home" features that can make this process quick and easy.

Pay attention to the type of home

Comparing your home with other similar homes is the only way to truly determine the right list price. Realtor provides a search portal of “Just Sold” properties. Dena Landon is a writer with over 10 years of experience and has had bylines appear in The Washington Post, Salon, Good Housekeeping and more.

The more of these comparable details that aren’t similar to your home, the less likely the property will be a good comparison. To find fair comp homes to yours, you need to look at the properties’ details without letting your emotions cloud your view. It is very easy to want to believe your home is better and worth more than other properties, but you need to ignore this bias. If the home has a strange layout or is partitioned into smaller, separate rooms, it can bring down the value and the sales price. Consider houses built within a 5-year range of your home being built.

Homes for sale nearby Gunzenhausen, Germany

Estate planners might use comps to help a client plan for retirement. At HomeLight, our vision is a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying. Therefore, we promote stricteditorial integrity in each of our posts. Homeowners might also make improvements that are too specific to their personal taste and won’t appeal to a wide variety of buyers. Enter your email to get connected and notified about our services. With this method, you will need to know the address of the home.

Sellers, especially those selling for sale by owner , use comps to determine the right listing price for their home. Real Estate agents will put all the comparables together in a report that should be easy to understand even for a layman. The most common comparable sales data in a market evaluation will be sold properties, pending sales, and current homes on the market.

ways to find real estate comps in your area

The comparables should help ensure they don’t offer more than they should. When a homeowner updates a bathroom or renovates a kitchen, their home value typically increases. Consider any renovations or upgrades you see in your real estate comps and how those compare to your home’s features.

The content on this site is not intended to provide legal, financial or real estate advice. It is for information purposes only, and any links provided are for the user's convenience. Please seek the services of a legal, accounting or real estate professional prior to any real estate transaction. It is not Zillow's intention to solicit or interfere with any established agency relationship you may have with a real estate professional. In spring and early summer, and they take longer to sell in the winter. Sellers often try to motivate buyers in slower seasons with a lower sale price, so keep seasonality in mind as you price your home.

Keep track of trends

Once you have a figure, you can compare it to online estimation tools. Zillow has their Zestimate tool that you can use to see how it compares to your own conclusion. When you are doing this research, remember to take some notes. If you don’t, you can get confused between properties when you are looking at many. Also, save photos and listing descriptions, as they can be taken down from the website without any notice.

Then use the following list to make note of what similar homes have that yours doesn’t, and what your home has that others lack. So think like a buyer and scope out other homes that are for sale or have recently sold in your neighborhood. Use Trulia to get familiar with what homes are listed for nearby, then swing by a few nearby open houses. Try our free Agent Match tool now to request a comparative market analysis on your home.

Typically, an appraisal is required by the buyer’s lender to make sure they haven’t offered more than the home is really worth. Occasionally, sellers use the services of an appraiser to price their home better too. Understanding real estate comparables and the state of the market in your local area is essential. It can help you make an informed decision about buying or selling a property.

But, hopefully, with our tips, you can get a better understanding of how to price your home so that it sells for its full value. Every now and then, you will run into a unique property for which there are no true comps. When this happens, to find accurate comparables, you will be able to leave the geographic area to find similar properties.

If you’re considering selling, getting it right means not leaving money on the table if you price too low or having your house sit on the market if you price too high. Agents perform a comparative market analysis — comparing similar properties that have sold nearby — to arrive at a listing price. A good place to start your research is realtor.com®’sJust Soldfeature. Just enter your ZIP code, and click “Search.” A list of recently sold homes in your area will pop up, along with their sale price. This will give you a general idea of the home prices in your area, but to really home in on a sensible price for your home, you should call on a real estate agent. You can find selling prices of homes in your area through your real estate agent, listing sites, or by visiting your local county clerk’s office.

Not all Trulia listings have the “comparable sales” feature. For some properties, you might instead see the “off-market homes” image carousel with nearby homes and their sold dates and prices. But you’re not done with comparables after you’ve accepted an offer.

It can also take a while for recent sales to update, though the sale price will be accurate. There are a number of sources that can provide information about home sales prices. For some listings, if you scroll down on the detail page you will see an image carousel showing off-market homes sold near the property you selected. Like Zillow, you’ll see the newest recently sold home listings with each property plotted on an interactive map. You can zoom in on your neighborhood and see sold properties near your home. When shopping for a home, buyers use comps to help them figure out if a property is reasonably priced and to calculate their offer.

There are many factors that go into home pricing, so don’t be tempted to take shortcuts by using poorly matched comps and guessing. Buyers reference comparables to decide how much to offer on a home. More specifically, they want to make sure they don’t overpay for the home they’re buying.