Determing Market Value before Making an Offer

After you have been shopping around for a home and found one that you like, it’s a good idea to find out as much as you can regarding the value of the home before actually making an offer to purchase the home. This will help you to make the best offer possible and increase the chances of your offer being accepted, particularly if you are shopping in a hot market.

One of the first things you can do to learn about the typical value of a certain type of home is to begin attending open houses. This will help you to understand more about the condition of homes that are on the market, in your market. This is the kind of information that you simply can’t get by reading the market analysis statistics your real estate agent might hand out. Be sure to keep the information you receive on the homes when you attend the open houses and then keep your eyes out for the home to sell. Once the house has sold you can go to the courthouse and research the sales price to find out the final sales price of the home, which can help you to understand more about the market value of similar homes.

You should also spend some time at the court house researching the sales prices of homes that similar to the type of home for which you are searching. Be aware that not all records will include information regarding the final sales price but with some clever figuring it’s not to difficult to find out the approximate final sales price of the property.

One way to do this is to see how much excise tax was paid at closing. This information will be stamped on the real estate deed and may typically represent a certain percentage of the final sales price. For example, in some area each tax dollars is equivalent to $500 in sales price. With that information you can easily calculate the final sales price.
One factor you should be aware of when determining market value is that tax values are not a good way to determine the market value. In some cases, they may act as a guideline, but they are usually not reliable. Your local tax assessor will probably be able to provide details about the area in which you live and how much of the tax value is relevant to the market value. For example, he or she may be able to tell you that the tax value is only equivalent to 80% of the market value.

Another way to find out the market value of the home is to order an appraisal. Now, of course, this will be done anyway after you make an offer on the home and it is accepted but if you truly want to know the market value of a particular home ordering an appraisal before you make an offer is a good way to obtain reliable information.

 
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