Comments | maxemulien: researching our own comparables

maxemulien

researching our own comparables

Jul 13, 2006 18:33

I think we may want to do some research of our own into what comparable houses in our area have sold for recently. How would you go about that?

In one foray to the town office, they didn't seem especially cooperative, but we could try that again. Zillow doesn't cover our area, but I haven't tried more thorough web searches yet.

Comments 3

akakd July 14 2006, 02:01:08 UTC

Here in Anchorage, there is an online database listing appraised values of homes. To get sale prices, I'd ask a realtor. Are you listing your house with one, or are you trying a FSBO? If you're listing your house with one, they can help you get old sales data.

maxemulien July 14 2006, 02:53:25 UTC

We're going to go with a realtor. We were just going to go with the one we bought through, because we were pretty happy with him. All the comps he picked seem to support his original off-the-cuff estimate of how much we could expect for our hose, but they don't include a house that sold just down the street a month or so ago. That house is a bit larger than ours, but so were many of the ones he picked, and that house was listed for about 25% more than his priciest comp at the time that it sold.

kuddliphish stopped by town hall previously to try to figure out how much that house actually sold for, but apparently the person she talked to claimed that you need the owner's name to get information (she had brought only the address) and that it can take several months for the information to make it into the system. Both claims sound a little suspicious to me, but I don't actually know how such things usually work.

akjdg July 14 2006, 03:24:20 UTC

Based on the copious junk mail we receive, I'd have to concur with Mark. Realtors love to help you out as part of their fishing for business process. They have the data at their fingertips in the MLS database and parameterized software to make the comp analysis a snap to do.

Assessor's office data from your town may or may not be helpful. As Amy said, ours is online, but the way they update it and generate prices is a bit goofy and mysterious. Also, AK does not require that sales data be reported to local governments, so Anchorage's valuations are based on whatever they opt to use from whatever people opt to submit. Dunno what ME's reporting requirements might be.

domania.com is another site that used to be useful. Looks to be stupid and nosy anymore, also sez no ME data.