home values

Divining Your Home’s Value, The Quick-and-Dirty Way

Posted August 25, 2008 - 12:25 by Julie Rains

Real Estate and Housing

suburban home

It’s the American Nightmare: your neighbor, in an effort to avoid foreclosure, sells his house for thousands less than he paid two years ago, causing your home to plummet in value. It’s scary, but is it true? Several years ago, a real estate agent I had intended to hire seemed to think that a low sales price on one house meant a full-scale neighborhood decline. It didn’t. Since then, I’ve learned how to divine home values by looking at public records and applying the methodology used by professional appraisers. I’ll show you how to do your own public-records search, and explain why online home-valuation sites may or may not get the home-value number right.

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