Determing the Value of Your Home

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Have you ever wondered how much your home might be worth now? Or how much its price has fluctuated since you purchased it? There are a few ways to determine the value of your home. 

The quickest, though perhaps least accurate, way to do this is by going through the website zillow, which is a property value estimator. Zillow also allows you to view how much houses in your area are for sale at, so as to give you an idea of what property values are in your neighborhood. Property sales are also public records.

Zillow

With Zillow, all you have to do to find an estimate for the value of your home is to plug in the address for the property you are searching for. Zillow will provide you with the year the house was built, and estimate of how much the property is worth, the number of baths and bedrooms in the house, the number of square feet in the house, the size of the lot that the house resides on, along with any fireplaces it might have and the date the house was last sold on.

There are sometimes inaccuracies with the information on Zillow, particularly the number of baths and bedrooms in a house might be slightly different than what is posted on the website. Be aware that the lot size of the house may be inaccurate, as well. 

Zillow does not keep up-to-date on extensions or renovations that have been built on the house. These issues aside, Zillow is an excellent and nifty tool to play around with. You can see all the houses that are for sale in any particular neighborhood and the prices for which they are for sale at. You can also view the historical prices for the neighborhood.

Public Records

Public records are available for all houses. You can find the relevant public record office for your house by going to the a public records website, such as publicrecords.netronline.com. Generally, this link will take you to a search where you input your Zip code, it will give you the phone number of your county or town regulating agency on housing.

Usually, the agencies are called the County Property Tax Service office. Click the link they provide and then enter in your address on your county website. Make sure it is a .gov website, which means it is official and not some scam. 

Your local county government will give you the property tax assessment, which is the most true assessment of how much a piece of property is worth, since that assessment is what you pay taxes on!

If you are considering selling your house, or buying a house, remember that the value your home is assessed for tax purposes and may not be similar to the value you could get for it on the market. Prices fluctuate tremendously with housing units from year to year. 

This trend was especially seen during the most recent housing crisis, when the value of housing units across the country shot downwards. Whether you are buying or selling a house or are just curious, then having an accurate property value assessment is the best way to know how much your home is truly worth.