Posts Tagged ‘House Value’

3 Steps to Determine the Value of Your Dallas Home Improvements

Saturday, April 19th, 2008 by Joshua Harley
3-steps-to-determine-the-value-of-your-dallas-home-improvements

I recently wrote a post about how to use a house value report. In that post I briefly mentioned using one for determining the value of your home improvement projects. Since writing that article, I have received a lot of requests for more information about this. Understanding the true return on your home improvement investment is mostly science with a little art mixed in.

Before you start a project, there are 3 steps to determining the value of your home improvements.

  1. Step One - Find a good Dallas area Realtor that really knows your area or hire a professional appraiser. An appraiser is expensive (around $300) but will be more accurate than a Realtor. Plus, many Realtors have never done a TRUE comparative market report, opting only to compare bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage so they do not understand the intricacies that go into this science called an “Appraisal”.
  2. Step Two - Have your Realtor or appraiser prepare a comparative market analysis or full appraisal to determine the value of your home compared to other homes in your neighborhood. Once that first appraisal is completeld, have them provide a second house value report comparing your home with future home improvements to homes in your neighborhood with those same improvements.
  3. Step Three - (more…)

5 Ways To Use a Dallas House Value Report aka CMA

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 by Joshua Harley
5-ways-to-use-a-dallas-house-value-report-aka-cma

Every day, we receive over a dozen requests for a free house value report for homes across Dallas Fort Worth (strangely enough, a large percentage are for house values in Frisco and Keller Texas… does that mean something? huh). The vast majority of the house value requests are for home owners thinking about selling their home. They want to see what their Dallas Home would potentially sell for compared to what they own it for. Did you know that this is only one of many examples of how a free house value report or comparative market analysis (aka CMA) can be used?

Here Are 5 Ways To Use a Dallas House Value Report aka CMA

  1. Selling Your Dallas Home- The first and most obvious way to use the free comparative market analysis that you receive from Texas Home Central is to compare your home against other homes that have sold in your neighborhood. I wont go into too much detail here since this one is pretty obvious. What I would like to add here is that an “automated CMA” is not enough to give you a clear picture of what your home will sell for. Sometimes you will get a false sense of value and be too high or too low by thousands of dollars. Price too high and people will not bother looking at your home, too low and people will think something is wrong with your home and try to negotiate you even lower or again, not even visit. It’s imperative that a professional that knows the real estate market take the time to do a deeper analysis, comparing more that just bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage. A good agent will also compare lot size and location, upgrades, home features as well as what other homes have that your home may not have. (more…)