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Congratulations! You've decided to sell your home. It's a big step. It's
also a pain: determining a price, making necessary repairs, keeping the
house immaculate for the hordes of buyers who will be coming through,
negotiating, finding a new place to live, and, finally, moving.
Where to begin? Are you sure you want to move? You are? O.K., then
the first step is finding out what your house is worth in today's market.
Forget your assessed value. In California, with Prop. 13, assessed value
and market value have no relationship to each other anymore.
There are three methods to determine your homes value. First, go to
the County Assessor's office and pour through their records looking for
homes in your area similar to your own, then compare. This takes some
time.
Second, pay a fee and get a report from a data company, like
DataQuick, which collect the data from the County Recorder's and/or
Assessor's office and put it into their computers. The fees are nominal:
$9.95—down from $19.95; but, the data may be suspect and it is raw data.
The data may be suspect for several reasons. If the data collection
company uses the County Recorder's data, the data itself may have been
falsely submitted. Information on the price of homes is based on tax
stamps. People have been known to hide the stamps so no one else can find
out, or, they buy a higher amount of stamps thereby showing a higher
recorded price for the property. The county assessor's office is immune
from this tampering. Ask the data collection company which source they
use for their reports.
Another reason the data may be suspect is simple transcription
errors.
The third method of finding your home's current market value is
FREE*!
Just call a local agent, like us, and we'll provide you an accurate,
up-to-date report. The advantages of using a local agent over the data
companies is we know the properties in question. We can, usually, tell
you why a home sold for the price it did; what had to be done to the
house to sell it; what was left undone and thereby affected the price—all
the little nuances that come in handy when the negotiating begins.
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Of course the report is not absolutely free.
Although it won't cost you any money, you will need to speak with an
agent!
Here is our
form for your personalized market analysis. Please provide as much
information as possible and press the What's it worth?
button at the end. We will do our research and contact you as soon as
possible.
We've prepared a report
Getting Your Home Ready to Sell.
Follow the suggestions in this report and you will get the best price for
your home. Also, you might find my report for buyers interesting,
Buying a Home in California.
It details the steps in the buying/selling process. Although it is
written for buyers, it has a lot of pertinent information for sellers.
What are homes selling for in my neighborhood?
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