What’s My Fort Wayne Home Worth?
If you’re thinking about listing your Fort Wayne home for sale, it’s important you have a good idea of what it is actually worth in the current market. Your real estate agent will provide you with comps and a price they recommend you list it at, however, it never hurts to have a second opinion; and if you are listing your house “for sale by owner” it’s important you know how to ascertain the market value of your Fort Wayne home on your own.
Here are some tactics you can use to come up with the right price for your Fort Wayne home’s fair market value.
Consider Fort Wayne Comps
Comps, also known as comparables, is an aggregate of the information pertaining to homes nearby and similar to yours that have sold in the last three months. Your real estate agent will most likely use the information from these comps to create what is known as a “Comparative Market Analysis” (“CVA”) to set the selling price for your Fort Wayne home.
You can gather and compile comps relatively easily on your own, but you can use the in depth knowledge you have on your own home to take this information a step further. For starters, you can create a chart with all the selling prices for nearby Fort Wayne homes and cut out any outliers – or homes that sold way above or way below their market value, usually for some extraordinary reason.
Using the remaining homes, you can come up with the average percentage above or below their market value that they sold for. You can also compare each individual, similar Fort Wayne home to yours and make adjustments to your home’s value for any improvements you have made recently that increase its value, or that would make it preferable over comparable homes.
Even if your improvements don’t directly translate into added value – like installing eco-friendlier heating and cooling systems, for example – they can still help your home sell quicker.
Hire an Appraiser
While hiring an appraiser can cost you a few hundred dollars, you may still want you. The home appraisal is also usually a contingency in most offer contracts. Your home appraiser will usually result in a much different number than that of your real estate agent. Make sure you hire an independent appraiser, though, who is familiar with the Fort Wayne area, that way he or she can make important adjustments to their estimate for the unique features of your home.
Base Your Price on the Three C’s
A widely used pricing technique uses the following three C’s to come up with the value of a Fort Wayne home:
- Competition – know what other homes with comparable price ranges to your own are on the Fort Wayne market. You can then adjust your price either more or less aggressively, depending on the competition.
- Consumption – this refers to the average number of homes sold within a Fort Wayne neighborhood in a given period of time, usually on a per month basis. If similar, nearby homes sell on an average of two per month, for instance, and aside from yours, there are three listed for sale – it should take you about two months to sell your home if it is priced about the same as the others.
- Condition – compare your home to the other ones currently on the Fort Wayne market. Try to use the perspective of a picky buyer, and come up with the pros and cons of your home as compared to the competition.
If you are looking for a quick sale and are in need of a cash offer, be sure to call our JT Integrity Properties team today at 260-202-2222.