ONLINE HOME EVALUATION
Online tools will provide you with a very basic estimate of your home’s current value based on recent comparable home sales in your area using a comprehensive database. Note that the assessment is based on available data with no guarantee of accuracy and often uses an algorithm that simply averages comparable sales in the geographic area. These tools might be quick and easy, but they don’t take into consideration factors like location, current local trends and the condition or upgrades of the property. Be aware that the prices arrived upon might be highly inaccurate. Example 1 - I recently sold a home in Sycamore IL for $247,000.00. I had taken over the listing from a previous agent who had it on the market for 9 months and got ZERO offers. I agreed to take the listing on the condition that the seller would make some very minor cosmetic changes such as painting a couple rooms with a current popular color scheme. With their agreement I also agreed to list the home for the very same price as the last agent. Within 5 days of my listing going live I had an open house. I had 10 families come through and sold the home to a couple that saw the home that weekend within 1% of the listing price! You may be asking, what does this have to do with inaccurate online databases? Well... 3 weeks after closing the sale of this home for $247,000.00 I received an email from that company that starts with the letter "Z" and sounds like "pillow" stating "This Home was just Sold for $988,000.00"! Now I may be a good Realtor... But I'm not that good! This just proves that the online company's data is highly inaccurate! (yes I have a copy of this email if you would like to see it) Example 2 - A home in Ohio was put into one such system, Redfin (https://www.redfin.com/what-is-my-home-worth). The home last sold for $180,000 in 1998; it was appraised for
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