I just got a call from a friend that asked me how accurate one of those online home valuation web sites can be.

Part of my response was that these web sites are often more than 10 % off of your home’s true value. If you just want an off the wall guess, then that might be good enough, but not for actually setting a sale price or making plans.

#1 Let me ask you a similar question. Would you be able to decide what you would pay for a house without ever walking though it?

I think that the only way you can get an accurate estimate of value for your home is to have a local Realtor who works in your neighborhood look for recent comparable sales in your neighborhood, and then have them walk through your home so they can tell you how your home compares with the other homes that have sold.

Are your kitchen and baths more up to date than the other sales?

Is your location quieter?

Is the walk to nearby schools and parks easier from your home?

Are the colors in your home more popular than theirs?

There are a lot more questions I as a Realtor would ask myself as I walk through your home. I would be trying to imagine who the most likely buyer of your home is and what their concerns and desires might be.

#2 In most states these websites use publicly recorded home sales prices, the data there is often more than a month old because of how long it takes the government to record and post data. In Texas we have never trusted our state government. We believe they will try to tax us as much as possible and at every opportunity. Because of this Texans have so far refused to make the sale price of a home a public record, we are certain the state government would charge a sales tax or transaction tax on home sales. In Texas the online valuations generally work off of newly recorded mortgages and try to estimate the sales price of the home without knowing how much of a down payment the buyer made.

#3 If you want to judge for yourself the quality of the data the online services use you can ask them what comparable sales they are using. I have asked them that and the homes were miles from the subject home and very different in size and age. In large neighborhoods some sales from the same subdivision might not be good comparable sales, much less across town.

I believe that a computer can only tell us a very rough estimate of the value of a house without human input. A large part of the value of a home is the emotional value to actual buyers, and that is very hard to judge. Fortunately we at Still Brothers have worked in this area for decades and can help with that judgment. Call us. We will come out and walk through your home with you. We will also give you advice on how to prepare your home for buyers should you decide to sell it. There is no obligation to list with us and we do not charge for the market analysis.